


Kintsugi

by AwkwardAnonymous



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brotherly Bonding, Camping, Canon-Typical Violence, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Let's ignore all our problems, Nobody communicating, Not Canon Compliant, Self-Indulgent, Skinning, Stranger Avatar Danny Stoker, Stranger!Danny
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-12-20
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:36:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 9
Words: 29,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24911713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwkwardAnonymous/pseuds/AwkwardAnonymous
Summary: Tim joined the Magnus Institute to find out what happened to his brother.Or, where Danny wasn’t killed by the Stranger, and Tim does his best with that.
Relationships: Danny Stoker & Tim Stoker
Comments: 95
Kudos: 137





	1. Book-Worm

“How many pages of a book do you think you’d have to eat before you realised it wasn’t actually food?”

Tim pauses at the doorway of his apartment, halfway through toeing off his shoes, to blink at Danny.

“What?”

Danny grins slyly at him from the kitchen bench and gestures to a small collection of mushrooms and leaves spread over the counter. “When I was foraging today, I got into a chat with a hiker about edible plants around London and stuff. He was very interested in what kind of mushrooms I’d seen around, if you catch my meaning.”

Tim offered a small smirk as he dropped his keys in a small dish set by the door and wandered to the kitchen to inspect Danny’s haul. “Looks like you had to disappoint him.”

Danny snickered. “Yeah, no magic today. But that’s not the funny part. I, uh, sort of wanted a snack?”

Tim tried not to let his discomfort leak into the atmosphere — the easiness they’d found was still tricky — but Danny caught its scent regardless.

“It was nothing bad! I just made him… not know some things. He got a little spooked because he wasn’t sure what exactly a plant was, but it wasn’t like he had any reason to think they were _bad._ I promise he just felt very unsettled, not properly scared.”

Tim thought about a video he’d seen last week of a rescue dog seeing grass for the first time. It had spent its entire life indoors and cowered away from the unfamiliar green. Tim elects not to speak, Danny sighs.

“Anyway, not the point. The guy asks me what I’m collecting, and I tell him that it’s food and offer him some. I’m surprised he agreed, honestly. I think he was trying to be polite? Who just eats things they don’t know? Like seriously for all he knew I could have been giving him broken glass-“

“Danny.”

“Right. Sorry.” A flicker of frustration crosses Danny’s face before it smooths into something painted and jovial. Tim appreciates the effort, but really wishes Danny would shut up.

“So I could have given him some linden or something, but I think _you know what would be funny?_ And I give him my plant encyclopedia instead. He doesn’t know what a book is, obviously, and I very nicely tell him to tear off a ‘leaf’ and have at it. He opens the book to the first page and, very carefully, tears it out and stuffs it in his mouth. He makes such a _face_ when he swallows it that I can’t help but joke about him having another. But like, _he does?_ He straight up rips off the contents page and says some shit like ‘ _oh yeah you can really taste the freshness doing you good’_ and I am trying so hard not to lose it here, Tim. This guy’s eating my book and acting like he’s some wilderness connoisseur when he doesn’t even know what a plant is.”

Danny’s grin is back in full force as he tries to stuff down his giggles. Tim feels his own lips tick upwards. It was a little bit funny. Danny’s eyes twinkle in triumph and he leans forward conspiratorially.

“You know the best part? He kept going for _30 pages.”_

“No way.” Tim can’t help the laugh startled out of him.

“I’m serious! Look,” Danny quickly skitters over to where he’d thrown his backpack and pulls out his copy of _The Edible City,_ opening it to point at the ripped-up spine.

“You should have seen his face when I let go of him. I couldn’t stop laughing.”

Tim takes the book from Danny and runs his fingers over the torn paper. “I can’t believe you made a guy eat this. You know, If you thought it was a bad present you could have just said something, I wouldn’t have minded.”

Danny cackles. “ _I_ didn’t make him do anything! It was still a book— it always tasted like a book. _He’s_ the one who wanted to pretend he liked eating wild plants.”

Tim does a bad job biting back his smile — he really shouldn’t be encouraging Danny. When Danny beams back at him, though, it’s hard to think of a good reason why.

“Speaking of eating,” Tim eyes the assortment of foliage before him with some trepidation. “What should I be making for dinner?”

“Oh, um.” Danny squints as he considers the more human element of his latest hobby. “… Soup?”

Tim picks up some mushrooms and turns away to run them under the sink.

“Alright,” He calls over his shoulder. “You figure out what leaves go with miso.”

The soup ends up a little too tangy, with a strange film of _something_ that sticks to their teeth, but Tim likes it all the same.

Danny doesn’t replace _The Edible City,_ and it stays nestled between two of Tim’s architecture books long after Danny’s interest in foraging wanes.

\---

“What do you know about supernatural worms?”

Danny spares a glance at Tim before turning his attention back to his origami. “Um, they’re gross?”

Tim groans — a bit dramatically, in Danny’s opinion — and falls onto the couch against him, causing Danny to muck up his squash fold. He kind of likes the way it throws the paper rabbit’s shape _off._

“Danny I need you to be serious with me. Martin — one of my work friends — was attacked. By a lady made of worms.”

Danny’s hands still and he looks at Tim fully, notices the tension marring his face. “Yikes. Is he, like, dead?”

Tim’s face scrunches up. “No, Jesus. He was trapped in his apartment two weeks though. We all thought he was off sick. She had his phone, answered our texts. I hate that we didn’t notice.”

Tim drops his head into his hands and Danny squirms in discomfort. He’s not good at comfort. He doesn’t know how Danny used to comfort Tim, and even if he did, he doesn’t know if playing the part would reassure Tim or sow seeds of resentment. Is a hug too familiar, too sharp a reminder of who Tim lost? Danny knows doing nothing is equally an admittance of how much he isn’t Tim’s brother, so he carefully places a hand on his back and rubs it in what he hopes is a reassuring manner.

Tim lifts his head and looks at Danny with a kind smile and guarded eyes. Danny hopes it’s enough.

“Do you know how to deal with them? Martin’s going to be living in the archives for now — I went with him to his flat to grab his things today — but we’re all a bit on edge. Any advice on how to keep them away? Kill them?”

Danny risks sliding his arm fully around Tim and nudging into a half-hug. He meets no resistance, and gulps back butterflies. “I haven’t really met a worm lady before. What’s her deal?”

Tim sighs. “She has a bunch of worms living inside her and if they get you, they dig into you and eat you from the inside out.”

“Ew.” Danny scrunches his nose. “That’s rank.”

“Yeah. No tips then?”

“No I… I know the sort of thing she is.” Danny looks meaningfully at Tim. “She won’t be able to find you here. I make this place tricky to know... As far as killing them goes,” Danny shrugs, “A worm’s a worm— just step on them or something.”

Tim smirks. “What, no superpowers?”

Danny gives a thoughtful hum and feels his chest warm. “I can’t really hurt something as mindless as a worm directly. I could probably make them not recognise each other, throw off any hive-cooperation? Would make stomping on them easier.”

With his free hand, Danny taps his chin and hopes the soft clinking doesn’t upset Tim. A thought occurs to him: “You know, I’m not entirely sure they could even burrow into me. At least, I reckon it’d take a lot of extra effort on their part.”

Tim spends a moment mulling over that.

“Huh.”

“Yeah.” Danny isn’t sure what to say. “Does that help?”

“A bit,” Tim closes his eyes and leans back against the couch. “It’s good to know evil worms can’t trap me here too at least. I’m not sure about stepping on them though— Martin said they could _jump.”_

“Oh my god _no thank you_ set them on fire.” Danny giggled, though he wasn’t entirely certain what the joke was. “You are safe here though, and not just from worms. Most things will find it very hard to pin this place down, even if you tell them you’re here.”

“Is that why my packages keep not getting delivered?” Tim grins up at him.

Danny very carefully doesn’t say anything.

“Oh _Motherfucker.”_

_\---_

Two weeks later, Tim comes home with _Freaks and Followers_ tucked away in his messenger bag and finds his apartment empty. A colourful piece of origami sits innocuously on the kitchen counter, and Tim spends a minute trying to figure out what the hell it’s supposed to be. When Danny had first tried his hand at origami all his folds had been precise, and Tim had amassed a small paper menagerie that still sit proudly on his bedside table. As the weeks passed, the folded animals began to sit crooked, legs were bent in strange angles, and when Tim couldn’t guess what Danny had made his almost-brother seemed as equally delighted as when Tim got it right. Now Danny’s creations were just peculiar shapes, as far as Tim could tell.

Tim decides this origami is turtle adjacent. Probably.

With an uneasy sort of fondness settling over him, Tim slips _Freaks and Followers_ next to the maybe-turtle and heads for the shower. He wasn’t sure bringing the book home was a good idea. He’d scoured it when he first began at the institute, desperate for some kind of clue about Danny’s presumed death, and combed over it again when he’d discovered that his brother had died in an entirely different way. Neither reading was particularly illuminating, and Tim had all but forgotten about the book.

When Jon had pulled it from the library to delve into Leanne Denikin’s statement, the name Orsinov had leapt out at Tim from the faded pages. Tim had a spotty understanding of Danny’s time in the circus, but he recognised the name as important simply because it was so rare for Danny to ever use them at all.

When Tim emerges from the bathroom, a towel and steam hanging off him, Danny immediately beelines for him while waving the book around excitedly.

“I know these guys!” Danny’s enthusiasm is infectious, and Tim is only slightly irritated that he’s being blocked from getting into some clothes.

“Thought you might,” Tim dodges around Danny and slips into his bedroom, “Orsinov, right?”

Danny pokes his head through the doorway. “No, actually! I do know _an_ Orsinov, but it isn’t whoever this dude is. I meant these two!”

Tim turns back to Danny with a t-shirt and joggers in hand, praying Danny will take the cue to give him some privacy, but obligingly observes the two strongman Danny points at.

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah!” Danny beams, “They used to be part of the circus, obviously, but they left way before I joined. They still came by and helped out, though. They’re heaps of fun— Hope’s a riot.”

Tim inspected the old photo more thoroughly, the group’s smiles seemed closer to leers. “Hope’s a weird name for a monster, was the other one called Virtue?”

Danny snickered. “Nah. They don’t have their own names, they just borrow them.”

 _Just like you._ The unwelcome thought is sharp and biting, and Tim abruptly nudges Danny back and waves his clothes at him. Danny blinks before alighting to the couch, leaving Tim to shut the door and drop his towel. He suppresses a sigh as he pulls on his shirt: there’s no chance Danny didn’t notice Tim’s mood swing, and it wouldn’t take much guesswork to pinpoint the reason. Tim knew Danny was trying, had been for almost a year, and it was with this thought front and centre that he strode back into the living area determined to try as well.

“So, creepy circus men?”

Danny openly radiates relief when Tim settles down beside him.

“They’d help me set up the sideshow for, uh, _things._ If I could get them chatting, and I always could, they’d tell me about some of the wild stuff they used to do— They’re at least three hundred years old so they’ve had plenty of time to do dumb shit.”

As Danny babbles about centuries old strongmen freighting convicts to Australia, Tim dimly recognises how surreal it is to be able to talk to his brother, to have this little slice of gossamer comfort. If he tunes out everything Danny is actually saying, he can almost pretend nothing’s changed. 

\---

Danny is crumpling up his origami paper — just to see how it looks — when Tim paces into the apartment, face set with a familiar sort of worry.

“I gave a statement today. About you.”

“Um.” Something in Danny unsettles. He’s never liked Tim working at the Magnus Institute, but figured it’s be hypocritical to try and stop him. Tim had always been keen to keep Danny a secret, so He hadn’t considered the chance he’d be tossed forward for the Eye’s examination.

“Yeah.” Tim gives a grim smile. “Sasha… she had a run in with a monster too, called itself Michael? Big creepy hands?”

The complete incomprehension must be plain on Danny’s face because Tim just groans and collapses on the couch beside him, shoes still on. Danny thinks that Tim would be very grumpy if _Danny_ kept his shoes on in the house, but refrains from commenting. 

“The worms have been getting worse around the institute. We all know something’s coming and- And I think it would be good to have someone there to help us. So I told them about you.”

“You want me at the institute? I thought you wanted less monsters there.” Danny regrets the words as soon as they slip out.

Tim looks hurt. “Don’t call yourself that.”

What Danny is or isn’t is a very old wound that Danny has spent far too much time poking. He cautiously takes Tim’s hand in his and pretends he understands what it means to have a brother.

Tim sighs and squeezes Danny’s hand. “You said you could protect the flat from the worms. Could you protect the institute?”

Danny purses his lips. “I didn’t say that. I can keep things from knowing that this is your place, but if I actually encounter the hive I can only disorganize it.” Danny scowls, “I can’t hide a place so full of Knowing, the Archivist should protect you.”

Tim blinks at Danny. “I don’t know what you think Jon can do, but he doesn’t have any anti-worm powers.”

Danny, admittedly, had never paid much attention to the other powers but even he knew about the legacy of Gertrude Robinson. The Circus had some very strong thoughts on the last Archivist, and Danny can’t imagine this new one is much different, regardless of what Tim thinks. 

“I don’t like that place.”

“I know, I know— Libraries are evil.” Tim teases with soft eyes. “Could you still come? Even if you don’t do anything, you still know more about this stuff than we do—” Danny privately thought it was hilarious he was more in the know than the Eye’s lot “—and I just told everyone I have a spooky brother. I need to bring in the goods.”

“Can’t you do it?” Danny whines.

Tim smirks. “What are you, four?”

I mean— _kind of.”_

They blink at each other before Tim bursts into giggles. Danny cracks a moment later, and slings an arm around Tim to soften the reminder, just in case.


	2. Statement of Daniel Stoker

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Danny _really_ wishes he hadn't agreed to go to the institute.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a heads up that this chapter involves a pretty detailed account of being skinned alive, and is why this fic has a graphic violence warning. Please take care!

Standing at the institute steps, Danny wonders how mad Tim would be if he just turned around and left. As if reading his mind, Tim grabs his arm and ushers him towards the door just as Danny spots a few wriggly masses in the grass – no doubt Tim’s actual reason for not lingering.

“Wait-wait-wait!” Danny waves emphatically at a worm cluster. “Let me see if they can eat me.”

“What.” Tim’s exasperation rolls off him in waves. Danny’s already made them close to an hour late—dallying getting ready, ‘forgetting’ his wallet, demanding they stop to get hot chocolate, and now trying to get eaten by worms. In Danny’s defence, he _really_ didn’t want to be here.

“You know, cause I’m all—” Danny raps his knuckles against his forearm “—I don’t think they’ll be able to get through me right away.”

Tim’s face is completely deadpan, save the tick of one eyebrow arched upwards.

“… Yeah, alright.” Worth a shot, Danny mulls as he let himself be dragged forwards.

The moment they cross into the institute proper Danny is hot with the feeling of sickness. He blindly grabs for Tim’s hand and half-hides behind him. It does nothing to quieten the sensation of being exposed and _Known_ , but it does make Danny feel a little bit better, relaxes him enough to remember to breath and blink. Tim looks at him with concern and Danny’s returning smile is entirely reflexive.

“I don’t like being so _Seen_.”

Tim’s brow furrows but he lets Danny cling as he walks them deeper into the building, passing bustling employees. A switch is flicked in Tim, who smiles and jokes with nearly anyone who meets his eye, and Danny feels pulled out from his hiding spot if only to prove he can put on a show too. His hand stays firmly in Tim’s.

The feeling of _Watched_ presses into his back as they descend to the archives, but each step forward feels equally perilous as whatever lurks just outside of Danny’s senses. He knows he’ll see nothing if he glances behind him, but he still has to resolve himself not to risk it.

It’s a relief when Tim and Danny step into the cluttered archives, if only for the small whiffs of fear floating off the three guarded figures there. Danny is unapologetic in snatching it up.

There’s a beat of silence as Danny inspects the infamous archives. The door to the archives opens onto space for four desks, lined either side with overflowing shelves of boxes, files, and paper. An ugly carpet coats the floor, worn down with traffic. Danny can see a heavy door set into the wall behind the desks and Danny spies more haphazard shelves through its window. To Danny’s right, in front of the desks a wooden door proclaims ‘ _Head Archivist’s Office’_ in faded gold lettering.

Tim clears his throat tugs Danny forward with convincing gusto. “Alright. Danny, this is Jon, Martin, and Sasha. Everyone, this is my— brother, Danny.”

“Hello!” Danny chirps. The room’s atmosphere is decidedly uncomfortable, which does plenty to bolster Danny’s spirits. He can practically feel Tim grimace.

“Erm, hello.”

Danny grins at the large man waving uncertainly from his cramped desk. His features are soft and wispy. Danny decides he rather likes Martin.

“So, you’re not human then?”

Danny’s tries not to look too delighted at Sasha’s immediate accusation.

“Um,” Danny’s eyes flick to Tim. “Not traditionally.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” The Archivist speaks.

Danny feels his jaw jump as a static crawls over his tongue. It’s hardly a compulsion, but it’s rude nonetheless.

 _“It means-”_ Tim’s hand, still in Danny’s, grips tight. Danny huffs and forces back his instinctive hostility. “It means I’m changed, from how I used to be.”

The Archivist frowns, clearly unsatisfied. No one speaks, and Tim mutters a soft curse.

“Why did I think this was a good idea?” He groans with put-upon drama before half-dragging Danny to the desk next to Martin’s and pointing at the chair tucked near it. Danny obligingly sits.

“I dunno I- Oh!” Danny’s eyes catch on a little ceramic deer he’d given Tim when he’d first tried his hand, rather predictably, at pottery. Danny points and grins up at Tim victoriously, “You kept it.”

Tim huffs. “I haven’t figured out what the hell it’s supposed to be yet.”

Danny fills with a funny sort of warmth and he returns his attention to investigating Tim’s desk. Tim leaves Danny to poke around his draws as he tries to dissipate the wariness coming off his co-workers.

Danny is surprised at the shear number of trinkets Tim’s held onto. Near the wobbly deer sits a smooth river stone Danny had picked up when freediving, and a carved piece of driftwood is tucked into the top drawer. Danny is shocked to find the hand-pressed forget-me-nots delicately bookmarking _another_ Smirke retrospective. He’d been sure Tim had hated that particular gift.

Between Danny’s clumsy gifts and office supplies nestle other little discoveries. An unsolved rubix cube sits with a couple of stress balls and a… whistle? A pack of novelty paper clips is the only concession to the neat minimalist aesthetic of Tim’s planner stickers and rose-gold pens. Danny thinks of the cheery shiba sticky notes on the fridge at home and thinks Tim should get some for here, too. He’s pulled out of his inspection of a blue notebook he’d hoped contained lots of secrets, but actually just had a bunch of reminders and to-do lists, by Tim snapping his hand in front of his face.

“Okay that’s enough snooping. Tell us about Prentiss.”

Danny stares blankly.

“The worm lady,” Tim sighs.

“Oh! Alright.” Danny brightens immediately and reaches for the whistle in Tim’s desk. Tim intercepts him and offers the rubix cube as a compromise. Danny fiddles with it momentarily before grabbing a stress ball instead. It’s shaped like half a lemon.

“Okay so.” Danny looks down at the squished-up lemon in his hands—he’d expected it to bounce back quickly, but it unwinds from misshapenness slowly. “ _OhIlikethis_. Uh, what do you want to know about her? I’ve never met her or anything, but filth’s filth.”

“Before we get into that,” the Archivist injects, “I’m not entirely, well, convinced that your brother just conveniently _happens_ to be a supernatural entity.”

“What—” Tim starts—

\--just as Danny leers— “ _Would you like a show?”_

 _“Danny.”_ Tim’s warning is razor sharp. Danny flicks his eye’s up to his brother and blows a raspberry.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to do anything _bad._ Just a quick little performance. For, uh, evidence! And stuff.”

“ _No.”_

“ _Ugh. Fine.”_ Danny rolls his eyes and they land back on the Archivist. He extends his hand out to him with a flourish. “Well! D’ya want some proof?”

The Archivist looks very much like he does not want any proof and in fact would much prefer to be somewhere else. Nevertheless, he takes a few hesitant steps forward and gingerly places his hand in Danny’s. The Archivist’s sharp inhale as he brushes against Danny’s china-cold skin is immensely gratifying.

“ _O-oh._ You’re…” The Archivist experimentally presses his thumb against the flesh of Danny’s palm, trembling slightly when it meets no give. Danny hums in agreement.

“Um. J-Jon?” Martin’s squeak jolts the Archivist out of his little exploration, and he swiftly retracts his hand, rubbing it absentmindedly.

“R-Right, yes, well. I’m convinced, I suppose.”

“What? Just like that?” Sasha pipes up from where she’d been silently taking in the exchange. Martin is fretfully looking at Jon, worrying his bottom lip.

Danny grins and reaches towards them both, waggling his fingers at them. “Double-blind test?”

“I don’t think you know what that means.” Tim murmurs as the two archival assistants share a look.

Sasha nods and steps forward to grab Danny’s left hand, while Martin tentatively scoots his chair a bit to bridge the gulf between the desks and clasp Danny’s right. Both feel the _wrongness_ instantly.

“What are you?” Sasha’s voice is soft. “—Made of, I mean.”

“Me!” Danny proclaims. “I’m still my own skin, which is very rare for my kind, but it’s different now.”

Tim groans as that little titbit sets off a barrage of splutters and confusion from the others. Danny, for the first time today, feels in his element.

“Okay, look. What Danny is isn’t important. What matters is how he can help us with the worms.”

It’s Martin who shakes his head. “No, I think it does matter. If you want to bring someone— _supernatural_ into the institute, I think it’s only fair the rest of us know what we’re dealing with.”

Tim thins his lips, and Danny remembers it was Martin who spent two weeks sieged by worms, that Sasha had met a mysterious entity the day before. It was honestly shocking they’d allowed him in here, so much so that Danny muses that Tim may have been… _light_ on the details of Danny’s change.

The Archivist clears his throat. “I’d like to get Danny’s version of events regarding what exactly happened to him.” As he speaks, he pulls an old tape recorder from his jacket pocket and carefully sets it on the corner of Tim’s desk and meets Danny’s eye. “Would you mind giving a statement?”

Danny curls his lip at the recorder as the question prickles into him. _“_ Yes. _Stop that.”_

The room tenses.

“…Stop what?” Tim’s gentle murmur sends a wave of discomfort through Danny. It sounds too similar to early on, when Tim had to tiptoe around the thing in his house, lest Danny grow tired of playing with his food. The fear coating the air turns saccharine and cloying. It’s all a little much.

“Sorry,” Danny whispers, white-knuckled around the stress ball. “It’s just this place. It- _hurts._ When he asks questions.”

Tim gently places a hand on Danny’s shoulder, and Danny takes in the worried set of his brows. He can’t keep hurting Tim, he’d promised himself that.

Danny takes a deep breath and pretends his lungs use it. He meets the Archivist’s fretful gaze and resolves himself.

“I will give you one statement. One.” He focuses on the weight of Tim’s hand and the pliable texture beneath his fingers. “And then I need you to not ask me anything for a bit, or at least let me eat something. Being Known is… tricky, for me.”

“…Right,” The Archivist draws the word out as he slowly reaches to hit start on the recorder. The crackle of tape itches on Danny’s skin.

“Statement of Danny Stoker, regarding… what he is. Statement recorded direct from subject, April third, 2016. _Statement begins_.” 

“I should start by saying I’m not Danny Stoker, not really anyway. I’m quite sure I use to be him, Tim certainly thinks so anyway, but I have no recollection of ever being Danny Stoker. I think that’s quite the point, actually.

I was born, like most things, without a name. The details of my creation are foggy - I think the memories are muddied by who I was – but I know I was screaming. I think the Seamstress had me, was making a dress from my skin. She’d cut down the length of my flank and was carefully pulling back my skin, pinching away connective tissue with their not-hands. It hurt so badly. I thrashed and screamed but wherever they touched me I was completely still. I guess that was to stop me tearing my skin? They probably could have made my whole body limp but I think they enjoyed the way I twitched and shuddered.

Something you might not know about taxidermy is that you want to make as few incisions as possible to the skin. It makes sense really. Seeing where the edges meet destroys the illusion, reveals the magic trick. So the Seamstress only broke my skin once – a long scar running from my armpit to mid-thigh on my left side. Then, they carefully slid their not-fingers in the small space where skin met muscle and pushed their way in until my torso was sitting inside myself like a loose sack.

Then came my leg. They reached down through the divide of skin and meat incrementally, lifting my skin from thigh to ankle. Then, like pulling a foot from a sock, The Seamstress reached into me to grip my bare thigh and pulled my leg through the hole in my side. It was unbearable. My bones twisted and fractured as they were pulled upwards and through my flank. The Seamstress didn’t care how mangled my body was so long as her fabric was undamaged. The pain became so overwhelming I forgot my own name as I screamed out in despair. This is where I, as I am now, began in earnest.

The Seamstress paused in their work and regarded me. Perhaps I should have been relieved for the respite, but that limbo _terrified me._ They asked, very softly, who I was. I realised I wasn’t very sure, and my sobbing shook me so greatly I couldn’t speak. The Seamstress gently got up from their work and left me alone in the room with my leg still half out my skin, toes still attached to sinew. Perhaps I could have used this reprieve to try and run, or tear my fingers into my skin to spite them. But I didn’t. I just lay there, wishing to escape myself.

I think I could have held onto who I was if I tried, but I let it flow out of me in small red rivers.

The Seamstress returned some time after. It seemed some decision had been made, and they resumed their work with the same ruthless proficiency as before. I’d later learn that I’d lost myself far sooner than most of their victims – most remember who they are until their face comes off, and even then, plenty still retain some inkling long past that. My embrace into anonymity had been received as somewhat pious, and that was what saved me.

It became somewhat easier after that. I’m not sure if it was my deterioration as a who, or the simple fact that the more skin The Seamstress removed, the more space they had to work with, the less of me they had to break to squeeze my body out of my coating. It still hurt though. I would weep with relief when my blood trickled against my exposed muscle as its wetness gave my nerves a sensation other than _burning._ I was sure I should have been dead, or passed out from pain, but I was awake for all of it.

Finally, my face came away with a sickening tear. The sound of your ears losing their skin was so close and so distant. Any sense of a ‘who’ that I may have still possessed was ripped away with my skin. It was a stranger who lay on the table, glassily watching the Seamstress invert and hang the skin. Carefully take a scrapper to it to remove any fat or grizzle that regrettably still clung to it. Wash away the streams of blood so as to not stain the skin’s terracotta complexion.

Once cleaned, The Seamstress carefully packed every inch of the skin with salt and took it away to tailor a suit. The stranger lay prone and awake on the table, awaiting the arrival of The Toymaker. An old gentleman with hands that were not his own came and inspected the mess of limbs before him. The Toymaker began to hum to himself as he worked – a tune all in the circus would learn more intimately than themselves, though that is an easy bar to clear. The Toymaker slowly rebuilt the stranger. He pulled away muscle and picked out cracked bone, sculpting replacements out of clay, and filing the cavity within them. He worked in silence for an age until the stranger had a body once more.

The Seamstress returned with the skin, now supple leather. The stranger was helped into the suit, stepping through the long gash cut in the side. It has once been mine, so it fit like a latex glove.

The Seamstress pinned and fussed with the fit of my skin, eventually satisfied with the drape. They carefully stitched up the opening with strong black thread, and I was an ‘I’ again. The Toymaker stepped in with his easel for the final touches – painting over unwanted freckles, adding blush back into my cheeks, smoothing over old scars. He never moved to cover the stitched-up gash though. When he was satisfied with his work, he took me by the arm and led me to a giant kiln. Some of the firebug folk ran it, but I have no clue how we managed to spin clay-firing to appeal to Desolation’s lot. The flames make clay stronger, seems antithetical to them, but maybe they just enjoyed burning stuff?

Anyway, I walked in. Twice-fired; bisque then glaze, and so I was born. Nikola took me under her wing – still Grimaldi often, back then – and I went from a simple to doll to head of the sideshow.

Working with the circus was fun, and had I not found Tim I would probably still be there. It was summer when I spotted him—I was out recruiting members for our choir—and he stood out instantly. To be clear, I didn’t recognise him, I still don’t, but he looked so much like me. Same bronzed skin, same dark roots peaking out from his honey-bleached hair, and when his eyes caught mine I gazed into wet dirt. He looked like earth, like clay, like me.

Tim hugged me so tightly it’s lucky I don’t have to breathe. He was rambling questions; _How was I alive? What happened? Did I need help?_ It wasn’t until he placed a hand against my cheek that he realised my skin was unyielding and cool. I wrapped my arms around his back and leaned down to ask-

_Who are you?_

Tim was quick to pull away, but suddenly found he didn’t know where the streets led, what buildings were. I fed off him half the night, and I don’t think I’ll ever have such a feast again. His fear of who I wasn’t was so much sweeter than any fear pure anonymity can produce. I had eaten so well I allowed him to eventually escape and I returned to the circus punch-drunk and sated.

That might be why I sought him out again. He was marked by our first encounter his fear was so deep that it was simple to discover his apartment. When he opened the door I was hit with that same sugary rush of fear, and I feasted again. And again. And again.

Tim tried to shut me out of his apartment, but my influence could reach him under the door and he’d simply not know who was knocking for him and let me in. Then he began bargaining with me, calling me his brother, pleading me to remember some childhood memory I never experienced. It was all extra seasoning really, but eventually the core flavour changed. Tim knew I wasn’t his brother in any capacity, and the novelty wore thin.

It was just as I had half-decided to finally finish with my meal that Tim, between gasps of fear, asked me to live with him. I was completely blindsided and equally delighted. I couldn’t, of course, I had my role in the circus, but the idea that this man would— _play house_ —in some misguided attempt at finding his brother was _hilarious._ So I didn’t kill Tim, and found myself returning to his apartment to simply bask in his unease when the opportunity presented itself. He’d grill me with questions, clearly trying to find something that led back to Danny, and he spoke in turn about himself, about having a brother.

We spent Christmas together, and I realised the only reason I was there was because I— liked Tim.

I sort of quit the circus—Nikola had _a lot_ to say about that—and went to live with Tim. We spent all of New Years hashing out my ‘diet plan’ – I’m practically vegan now – and sorting out how we were going to work around each other.

So, as for what I am? I am the absence of Daniel Stoker. When he was taken, he sacrificed his identity, and I emerged from it. I don’t know Danny, am only aware he ever existed at all because of Tim. I- I don’t know if it’s possible for Danny to come back, his loss feels— important. Final.

I… would like to be a brother, though.”

  
“ _… Statement ends.”_

Danny keeps his gaze firmly on the lemon in his hands as the Archivist clicks the tape recorder off. Tim’s hand is a vice on Danny’s shoulder, and all at once Danny feels his strength leave him. He didn’t mean to say so much, didn’t realise how strong a spell the Eye cast.

Stupid.

“… You…” Tim’s voice trembles like Danny hasn’t heard since the first time they’d met. “You never said he. _Felt it._ All of it.”

Suddenly, Danny is acutely aware of the coldness of his skin, the absence of his pulse.

“ _Oh._ I— Yeah. I didn’t- really think. Of it.”

Silence. Danny can’t do this.

“I’m… Going to go outside. I need to— not be here. If you still want me to. Help. I can—I will—but you don’t… have to. Obviously.”

Tim doesn’t stop him from fleeing up the stairs, and Danny doesn’t acknowledge the wetness of Tim’s eyes.

The lemon is still crushed in his fingers and it’s the only thing keeping him from falling under the weight of the Watching thing that holds him until he is well clear of the Archives.

\---

He feeds from a child. It is so easy to find one just a little ways from their parent, have them not know enough of that parent’s face for them to find them again. The fear is greasy and meaty but it fills Danny with its weight, no matter how much Tim would hate him for it. He has had exactly five cheat meals since Tim had decided what he could accept Danny feeding on, but this is the first time Danny had broke the ‘no children’ rule. Children were easy to scare, and Danny had felt too fragile to try anything else.

Danny finds himself on a bench overlooking the Thames and idly stretches his influence to the occasional passer-by, drinking in their puzzled certainty that something is _off._

The sun has just crossed into the West when Danny’s gathered himself enough to reach for his phone and text Tim a simple _‘I’m here’._ He doesn’t know what else to say.

Tim responds almost immediately. Danny agrees to meet him at a café near the institute. A weight he didn’t know he’d being carrying sloughs off him with the knowledge he doesn’t have to immediately return to that feeling of _Sight._

The sun has seeped its warmth into his skin, but Danny feels no more human for it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So for those who might be wondering, Tim is not caught up on the Entities. Danny and him have a pretty delicate relationship, what with all the emotional trauma, and they aren't great at having big talks.
> 
> Essentially, Tim doesn't like being reminded of Danny's inhumanity, and Danny generally won't offer explanations without encouragement. So strap in for no one being on the same page!
> 
> Also, just so you know, I'm participating in Artfight this month (my username is Sofa if any of y'all want to attack me!) so the next chapter might be a little slower to drop. Thank you so much for reading and for your patience!


	3. Settle Petal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of chats and tea and poems.

Tim’s knuckles hurt. After Danny had left the institute Tim had muttered some half-excuse and locked himself in document storage before promptly putting his fist through the drywall. He realised too late he’d gotten plaster on Martin’s cot, because Martin _lived here now,_ and something dark and bitter bubbled out of him. 

He didn’t come out until his arms shook from exertion, thrown boxes and files haphazardly stuffed back onto shelves to mask his combustion. When Tim walked back to the others he knew it was wasted effort—the scent of spent gunpowder clung to him. 

At least Martin wouldn’t have to clean up the mess. 

They asked about Danny, Tim answered. A consensus was reached. Sasha left shortly after, she’d been given the week off after Michael, and Tim was both relieved and upset for her absence. He felt so exposed. Danny was his ghost; it felt wrong to have him aired out in the archives where all his hurt would be immaculately preserved for future researchers to pull back and examine. Having one less face peer at him with worry was a small relief, but Sasha had a way of smoothing down the twisting _vicious_ inside him. 

Danny texted him. Jon suggested Tim take a long lunch. Tim took the out.

Now, Tim sits at a small wooden table with his purpling knuckles clasping a large black coffee – no bells or whistles. There’s a soft melody of conversation and scraping plates to his back as he does his best not to let his sour mood pollute the midday. 

Tim has already finished his coffee, and was earning a few expectant looks from the waiting staff, when the bell above the café’s entrance chimes softly and Danny walks in. Tim made no move to catch his attention, and watches as Danny took in the clinically cosy atmosphere—white ‘tribal’ cushions, gold accents on concrete walls, cute vases with fake flowers – before his eyes land on Tim. Tim’s explosion has left him cavernous, somehow. All his fury has burnt out, leaving behind ashy space. He’s grown used to making room for Danny.

Danny winds his way to Tim’s window table with uncharacteristic sheepishness before sitting himself down. Danny opens his mouth to speak, shut it, casts his eyes to the side, bites his lip, starts speaking, comes up short. Tim waits patiently, idly thinking that Danny looks like he’s doing pantomime. 

Danny draws himself up and shoves a lemon-shaped stress ball at Tim. Tim blinks at it, once, then again at Danny. 

“I forgot to put it down.” Danny explains. 

Something that could generously be described as a snort shoots involuntarily out of Tim, the coiled knot in him doesn’t loosen, but Tim finds himself pushing it aside. 

Tim opens his mouth but found it flooded with uncontrollable snickering quick and harsh. He looks up to see Danny smiling at him, equal parts confused and pleased, triggering another punch of laughter. 

When Tim gets past whatever _that_ was, he finds himself asking Danny with familiar-fond-weary; “What are we doing?”

Danny has a small smile on his face. Tim liked those best; his brother’s grins were always crooked, hiked up to a side and toothy. Danny smiled in perfect symmetry, except for when they crept up on him, tugging one corner skywards before it widened into something even and porcelain. _A reminder he’s still there,_ Tim thinks. Hopes. 

Tim lets out a breath. “Do you want something to drink?”

Danny leans back on his chair and peers at the billboard menu set over the counter.

“Yeah, I’ll get it.” 

That was fortunate—Tim had not been offering to shout. Danny glances back at him as he rises from his seat. “Do you want anything?”

Tim’s eyes flick to his empty mug, but he pushes the thought aside. He should be eating. 

“Yeah can you grab me a- I dunno- salad?” Tim internally winces as Danny goes to order. Today was not a day for crappy pre-made salads. 

Tim quietly laments his lunch choices in favour of thinking about the bigger things worth lamenting, until Danny plonks himself back down at the table, sipping something syrupy and sprinkle-adorned. 

“How’d you get them to put sprinkles in your coffee?”

Danny smirks triumphantly. “It’s from the kid’s menu.”

A waitress arrives and sets a bowl of something that is obviously not salad in front of Tim as he sniggers softly. Danny’s eyes twinkle.

“The salads were all rank, so I got you soup. Surprise!”

Tim looks down at a small bowl of pea and ham and can’t bother with feigning irritation. 

Well-practiced, they both dance around bringing up about anything important, and companionably offer idle chatter until Tim’s bowl is empty.

“So,” Tim raps his knuckles against the edge of the table, wincing as a dull ache lances through them. Right. “They want you at the archives.” 

“What?” Danny looks personally affronted. “ _Why?”_

Tim shrugs. “Martin and Sasha think we can’t afford to not have you there. They’ve both seen how the worms… swarm together. When I told them you could disrupt that, they were on board.”

“But I-“ Danny hunches in on himself. His frown slants to one side. “But I told them how I _hurt you.”_

Tim exhales and lays his arm on the table, palm open in offering. Danny’s too-smooth skin feels fragile against his own. 

“It’s okay.” It wasn’t, not really, but they’d put it behind them all the same. “We talked about that, too. I told them I trust you.” 

Danny’s fingers tighten around Tim’s wrist. Tim wets his lips, carefully doesn’t think about his brother, and forges onwards.

“What you said today… I knew about it already. You’d already told me how you--“ _replaced-killed-desecrated “--_ changed Danny. It was just a lot to hear all at once, we’re okay though.” 

“You didn’t know he felt it.” Danny spoke in a hush. Tim flinches. 

“No, but… I probably could’ve guessed, if I’d wanted to think about it.”

“I didn’t mean to say so much.”

Tim huffs a sad sound. “No, I didn’t mean to say as much as I did when I gave my statement either. Jon, _somehow,_ is good at making people talk.”

Danny barks a laugh, a cruel flicker passing over his features. Tim should probably sort out whatever Danny’s deal with Jon is, but that’s going on the later pile. _Self-care._

\---

They wrap up soon after, and Danny—shockingly—offers to sort dinner. Tim feels like he can breath again. After they part, he idly wonders where the hell Danny gets his money. It isn’t a new thought, but stubbornly remains unsolved, mostly because Tim is certain he won’t like the answer if he ever asks. It’s probably some spooky bullshit. 

Jon’s squirreled away in his office when Tim makes it back to the archives. Martin gives him a nervous smile and Tim returns a two-finger salute as he flops into his chair and returns the half-lemon stress ball to its drawer. Tim abruptly decides that’s enough work for the day and kicks his long legs up onto his desk and settles in to dick around on his phone. 

“Tim? Would you, um, like some tea?”

Tim bites back a soft smile as he clutches at his chest and feigns swooning. “You, sir, are a godsend.” 

Martin huffs and gives Tim’s shin a soft slap with a meaningful incline of his eyebrows as he walks past on his way to the stairs. Tim’s feet stay on the desk. 

“Hard at work, I see.” 

Tim looks up from his phone to see Elias standing at the archive’s entry, coolly regarding the soles of Tim’s shoes. _GAME OVER_ flashes on his phone screen. 

“Oh! Heya, boss.” Tim waves jauntily as he tries to swing his legs off his desk as inconspicuously and casually as possible, like he was actually planning on doing that way before his boss’s boss saw him, _thank you._

Tim goes to type something at his computer – _Christ it’s not even turned on –_ as he mentally scrambles to get himself out of trouble. “Caught me during one of my—wellness pauses.” 

“Oh?” Elias’s eyes twinkle.

“Yeah. You put your feet up for 30 seconds every hour it, uh, improves circulation.” _Shut-up-stop-talking-for-fuck’s-sake “_ Desk jobs, yanno?” 

“Quite.”

Tim pretends to write a note to himself to shake up his aimless clacking keyboard façade. 

“So. What brings you down to the humble archives?”

“I came to have a chat with Jon.”

Elias doesn’t move. Tim starts aimlessly rooting around in his desk’s bottom drawer so he’s shielded from Elias’s direct view. Tim surfaces holding a ruler, for what he doesn’t know, and immediately slumps in relief when he sees Elias slipping into Jon’s office, the door clicking softly shut. He jabs his computer’s power button and listens as the hardware whirs to life. 

Martin arrives shortly after, balancing three cups and saucers with the ease of someone who’d spent a long time waiting tables. He carefully set his own tea down before offering out Tim’s, soft ‘ _Here you go’s_ and _‘Thank you’s_ passed between them. It was only as he was half-turned to Jon’s office that Tim thought to say-

“You might want to give it a minute– the big boss is in there.” 

“Elias? What’s he doing down here?” 

Tim makes a face. “Said he wanted a chat.”

Martin makes sly eyes at Tim. “Maybe I should go in then, give Jon a break?”

“How’d we get lucky enough to have you?”

Martin rolled his eyes even as pink creeps over his cheeks, shaking his head a little as he makes the short walk to Jon’s door and gives the wood a polite rap. Tim takes a sip of his tea, Martin’s snuck in a sugar despite Tim _insisting_ that he’s quitting sugar (it’s just what he needed), and watches Martin pop his head around the door and cheep a jaunty little ‘ _Sorry! Didn’t mean to interrupt’._ Jon didn’t deserve him. 

Elias follows Martin out of Jon’s office, and Tim makes a valiant show of logging in to his computer. Employee of the Month here he comes. 

At the foot of steps, Elias pauses and sweeps his grey eyes back to Tim, waiting until he’s mid-drink to speak.

“It’s good to see you’ve gotten your computer working now, the monitor lights were off before.”

Tim doesn’t choke on his tea, but it’s a close thing. 

“Oh- I. didn’t notice.”

“…That your computer was off?”

_Fuck._

Elias’s expression remained pleasantly neutral as he nods in dismissal and strolls back up the stairs. Once he’s out of sight, Martin turns to him.

“What was all that about?”

Tim groans and smacks his face down on his desk. _Fuck today_. 

\---

Danny finds hanging around the archives both exceptionally stressful and _dreadfully_ dull _._ On the first day, the Archivist, after timidly introducing the idea of _questions,_ spends the morning grilling Danny on the details of his abilities— _‘You mentioned questions hurt you…?’ ‘I’m fed from the fear of the unfamiliar, being Known is my antithesis.’ ‘Right. You said you can- unknow things. What does that mean?’ ‘See this book?’ ‘Yes?’ ‘What is it?’ ‘… I. I don’t-‘–_ which left Danny feeling grouchy and drained. He spent an antsy half-hour perusing the maze of cluttered shelves, but wasn’t inclined to read any of the statements and unwillingly indulge the Eye. Soon enough, Tim got sick of Danny’s pacing and sat him down on the spare desk --apparently it was supposed to be a place for people to write down their statements-- which only succeeded in giving him a flat surface to rap rhythms against until Tim pitched the lemon ball at him. 

Martin asks him how he liked his tea. 

One very pleasant cup of tea and a one-person game of catch later, Danny announces that he’s getting lunch.

“Didn’t you eat yesterday?” Tim frowns at him.

Danny tries not to take it personally. “Yeah, but this place really takes it out of me. I’ll have to eat more if you want me here all the time, especially if you want me to have enough strength to—” Danny wiggles his fingers “— _whatever_ the worm lady.” 

Tim’s eyebrows drag down and Danny rushes onwards. “Not everyday though! I’m still tired from yesterday, and the _Archivist_ had more questions today, so I’m feeling extra flat, is all.” 

When Danny returns from his impromptu meal, the Archivist tells him that the Head of Institute caught wind of him visiting the archives, and made it very clear that due to _confidentiality policy_ Danny isn’t allowed to read any of the statements anyway. 

Tim suggests Danny does his origami to pass time in the archives, but Danny finds his interest lacking. The spare desk, informally Danny’s desk now, accrues puzzles and crafts and cards in a losing fight against boredom, until Martin pulls out his little poetry book during his lunch break and shyly shows one of them to Danny. That night, Tim and Danny detour on the way home to pick up _Poetry for Dummies_ and a garish looking notebook. 

Danny starts scribbling out short poems that night, ranging from nonsensical lists of words that rhyme to an embarrassingly amateur attempt at waxing lyrical about brothers. He draws squiggly lines through _that_ little misadventure and starts leafing through example poems and trying his hand at haikus and sonnets. He finds himself especially fond of limericks. 

_The Circus is coming to town!_

_A dazzling and daring playground!_

_The Ringmaster trips,_

_Her knickers go rip,_

_And now she’s kept with the clowns._

The next day Danny badgers Martin with his poems, and Martin sheepishly offers some pointers. It is a shock to no one that Danny isn’t at all interested in keeping to strict meters (Martin admits he also prefers free verse) and the next day Danny finds himself being recommended Martin’s favourite poets with his tea. 

Danny does a dramatic reading of one of his longer poems on one occasion, and Martin, after conspiratorially checking to confirm that _yes, Tim was still in the library,_ quietly read one of his own. 

It’s after this short slam-poem show with Martin that the background fear in the assistant archival space evaporates. 

Sasha returns to work, and Danny watches the way Tim brightens around her with something close to envy. Tim is so large around others, swelled with so much cheer Danny worries he might burst. She suggests ‘vortex’ though, when she overhears Danny struggling to rhyme ‘nonsense’, so Danny decides he likes her, too. 

Three weeks in, a woman comes in to give a statement. Sasha recognises her immediately, and Danny is treated to highlight reel of _Ghost Hunt UK_ episodes after Melanie King storms out of the Archivist’s office and his archives. 

“Danny?”

“Hm?” Danny looks up from ‘ _The Lost City? Exploring London’s Underground Ghouls!’_ to where Tim is following up on Melanie’s statement. 

“Do you know a Sarah Baldwin?”

“Nope.” 

Tim hums. “What about someone who staples their skin back to themselves?” 

“Oh loads!” 

Sasha stared at Danny, the clicking of Martin’s keyboard stills. Tim let out a small, humourless, huff. 

“Yeah, that seemed like your kind of thing. Wanna give me a hand figuring out this statement?” 

“Yes, okay!” Danny grins wide. He’s always liked when Tim asked him about weird work stuff— for his otherness to be met with curiosity rather than mourning. Danny scoots his chair over to Tim’s desk and starts rummaging around for a statement, only to be stopped by Tim handing him a pair of headphones.

“We haven’t transcribed her statement yet, so you’ll have to give it a listen.”

It’s as Danny places the headphones over his ears that the Archivist emerges from his office and zeros in on them. 

“Tim. He can’t listen to that.” The Archivist rubs at his temples, “I _just_ received an email from Elias which, among other things, reemphasised that to the point ad nauseum.” 

“How’d you even _know_ what he’s listening to?” Tim crosses his arms. “Actually, doesn’t matter. King said she met someone whose skin wasn’t- _right._ That’s kinda Danny’s area, boss.” 

Danny couldn’t help but giggle at the Archivist’s wince. 

“Be that as it may,” the Archivist sighs, “I can’t allow it. Elias has been extremely vocal about his concerns with having a member of the public down here all the time.” 

“You can tell him it sucks here if it makes him feel better.” Danny says. 

Tim gives him a light whack and Danny snickers and knocks over a cup of pens in retaliation. A small scuffle commences as Tim scrambles to collect his pens before Danny can throw them around the room. 

A sharp _ahem_ cuts them off just as Tim goes for the headlock. 

“If you’re quite done,” the Archivist nips, “I was going to say that I, understand your frustrations. It seems a waste to have the opportunity to research paranormal activity with someone so—close—to it all.” 

“It is kind of weird,” Sasha muses from her desk. “I bet Danny could help us identify all sorts of things if he had the chance.” 

Danny decides not to voice that he’s actually very content not being informative. 

“…What if we called Melanie?” Martin flusters slightly as four pairs of eyes snap to him. “W-We could get her permission? We could say we wanted to have a— _consultant? —_ look over her case.” 

The Archivist blinks. “Y-Yes, that could work. Er, good thought.” 

A weird tension hangs in the air before the Archivist mutters something about finding a document for Elias and fleeing deeper into the archives. Martin’s bright pink. Danny didn’t know compliments could taste like train wrecks. 

The calling idea turns out to be a bust; as soon as Tim says he’s calling from the institute the line goes dead with a resounding ‘ _Piss off.’_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And so we've settled in to the institute! 
> 
> I would like to take a moment to justify my coffee decisions for Tim. I feel like the black coffee call might be a little controversial but I wanted to go for it for a couple of reasons.   
> First up, I like the contrast between him and Danny being on different ends on the drink spectrum. I think the drinks also kind of reflect them in their conversation a bit (and boy is it weird to make Tim the straight man of the two).   
> Secondly, in canon, Tim had a lot of time for his pain over Danny to simmer down before it was dragged back to centre stage. This Tim, simply put, has not. He's had less room to ease up, and that's seeped into how he has his coffee I guess. 
> 
> Anyway, feel free to tell me how everyone _actually_ takes their drinks down below! Thank you for reading!


	4. Dillydally

It had been a month since Danny had agreed to guard the archives, and Tim could see the way flightiness was nestling in him. Danny left for ‘meal-breaks’ with increasing regularity, returning to the institute with a sated haze and loose shoulders that would tense back up to his ears within an hour of sitting amongst the statements. Tim had tried confronting Danny about his growing appetite, but Danny had just smiled sadly at him with hungry eyes.

“It keeps _looking.”_

Tim had no fucking clue what that was supposed to mean. He knew Danny didn’t like the institute. When Tim had come home to announce his promotion to the archives Danny had pursed his lips like he’d been greeted with a particularly bad smell, even as he congratulated Tim. 

Theoretically, Tim could understand that Danny’s whole _not knowing_ shtick might clash with places that learn and teach, in some topsy-turvy dream-logic way. But Danny had been to public libraries before, had walked past schools without making stink eyes. Whatever was going on with Danny, it seemed to be institute specific. 

There was also the issue of Danny obviously hating Jon’s guts. Which Tim has yet to touch with a ten-foot pole. 

Currently, Danny sits at the spare desk, essentially his now, fluffing around with his stress ball. Tim eyes him contemplatively, deciding how to bring this all up; his search for the patch of Appalachian Trail where Mortimer apparently met his werewolf idling. Suddenly, Danny gasps and shoots up ram-rod straight in his chair. Beside him, Martin startles, pens clattering over his desk.

“Holy _shit!”_ Danny exclaims.

“What is it? Should I get Jon?” Sasha asks as she glances nervously at Tim.

“What? No.” Danny beams wildly at Tim, waving the lemon stress ball in his hands manically. “Easy-peezy- _lemon_ \- _squeezy!”_

Tim snorts. On the peripheries of his awareness, he can see both Martin in Sasha’s expression morph from confusion to weary amusement.

“Yep, that’s the joke,” Tim grins between puffy chuckles. “I can’t believe it took you that long to figure it out.” 

Danny smiles sheepishly at him, slightly crooked. “I just thought it was a lemon. This is so much better though!” 

The look of pure adoration Danny gives the ball threatens to send Tim in stitches. 

“You can have it, if you want.”

“Really?” Danny stares at Tim with the exact expression he did when he was eight and Tim had shown him how to find cool bugs under old bark. Tim’s heart swells with a dangerous cocktail of affection and sorrow. 

“Yeah, it’s basically already yours anyway.”

Danny’s smile is electric, and he begins squashing the lemon with renewed passion. Martin lets out a soft sigh.

“You scared me,” He half-chuckles. “When you gasped like that I thought ‘ _oh no he’s just felt the worms break in.’”_

“Oh, sorry,” Danny doesn’t sound very sorry. “If it makes you feel better, I absolutely cannot _feel_ worms and have no idea when they might attack.”

Martin’s smile is thin and kind. “That, um, sort of does the exact opposite, actually.” 

“Oh.” Danny stops playing with the lemon and looks at Martin, grin waning. “Sorry.” 

Martin nods his head. “It’s okay, I’m just happy it was nothing-“

“ _Ahem.”_

Everyone turns to where Jon is poking his out of his office doorway, glaring irritably. “What’s all this racket about?” 

“Lemon-squeezy.” Danny says helpfully. 

Tim cackles as Jon stares at Danny in utter bafflement. 

“… _What?_ ” He asks weakly. 

Danny squishes the stress ball in demonstration. “It’s a lemon. Because easy-peezy-lemon-squeezy.” 

Perplexity gives way to annoyance. “Right, of course. Well, if you all wouldn’t mind, _some_ of us are trying to make headway with Jane Prentiss.” 

Danny’s grip on the stress ball tightens. 

Sasha speaks up from behind Tim. “What are you doing about Prentiss? We don’t have any leads.” 

Jon hisses out a sigh. “No, it seems not. I managed to find the statement Prentiss made to the institute herself in 2014, but there’s nothing in it we don’t already know. At least as far as I can tell.” 

Ah, that explains Jon’s foul mood, at least. 

“Let Danny read it.”

Jon sends Tim a tired glare. “You know Danny isn’t allowed to access statements.”

“Yeah, to protect _people’s_ privacy.” Tim makes a sweeping gesture with his arms. “Prentiss isn’t a person – she’s a monster worm thing. She doesn’t have rights.” 

Tim catches a flicker of _something_ in Danny’s face before it’s quickly smoothed over. Jon hums in contemplation. 

“You may have a point. Surely Elias can’t take issue with disregarding the privacy of something no longer human, especially seeing as that thing is currently threatening the institute.” Jon pauses. “At the very least, I think we’ll be spared Ms. Prentiss lodging a formal complaint.” 

“What Elias doesn’t know won’t hurt him, huh?” Tim jokes. 

Jon shoots him a baleful look as he ducks back into his office briefly to collect the Prentiss statement. Danny looks distinctly uncomfortable when it is set down in front of him. 

“Hm. I don’t-“ Danny’s eyes fidget across the room before settingling on Tim. He Sighs. “…Okay.”

Gingerly, Danny picks up the paper and his face pinches. Worry squirms its way into Tim’s gut, and he suddenly feels he should be protecting his little brother, but what from he isn’t sure. The tension in the archives grows as everyone quietly watches Danny’s eyes drift across the paper, his form hunching lower with each word, as if pressed down by some unseen weight. 

In time, Danny puts the paper down but doesn’t unwind himself, just folds entirely over the desk, arms coming up to hide his face. It’s then Tim notices the trembles wracking Danny’s frame. Whatever held him in place snaps, and he rushes forward to clutch his hands over Danny’s shoulders.

“Danny?” Tim tastes the panic bubbling in his throat. “Talk to me. What’s wrong?” 

Danny’s eyes are shut tight. “ _It can See me.”_

Tim’s neck prickles and he has to fight a sudden urge to look behind him. 

“Do you need to get outside?” 

Danny nods frantically and clutches blindly for Tim’s arm. Gently, Tim eases Danny out of the chair, ignoring the uncanny certainty that he’s heavier than he should be. Tim catches Sasha and Martin both out of their chairs, glancing between Tim and Danny with naked worry. Jon hasn’t moved at all, still staring at Danny. 

“Don’t look at him.” Tim snaps. He isn’t exactly sure it will help, but when three pairs of eyes avert to corners of the room Danny exhales shakily, uncoiling slightly. 

Exiting the institute is an awkward affair. Danny keeps his eyes scrunched shut and Tim smiles awkwardly at the people they pass by on the way to the main doors. It’s as they’re leaving that the inexplicable itch to check his back becomes impossible to ignore, and Tim thinks he catches sight of Elias at the top of the stairs just before the heavy wooden doors swing shut. 

The thud of the door closing jolts Danny back to himself immediately. His eyes fly open and he throws himself at Tim, who wraps his arms around Danny’s back and tries to smooth out his shaking. Distantly, it occurs to Tim that this is one of very few genuine hugs he’s shared with his not-brother. Tim’s usual tactility had been dampened by the cold china sensation of Danny’s skin, had made it harder to convince himself his brother was still in there. The arms clutching at Tim’s back make him ache with awful familiarity, but there’s little this Danny does which doesn’t turn nostalgia sharp. 

Out of the corner of his eye Tim spots movement and is suddenly acutely aware of the number of worms writhing on the institute steps. 

“Danny,” Tim injects as much softness into his urgent whisper as possible. “Can we do this somewhere further away?”

Danny slumps with unabashed relief and pulls back. “ _Yes please._ God I hate-“ His eyes land on the disorganised cluster Tim’s staring at “-oh, worms. Right.” 

They make their way down the steps, and Tim doesn’t think he imagines the way the worms grow more erratic around Danny. 

It’s Danny who takes the lead, with Tim quietly trailing behind to wherever their destination might be. He isn’t certain Danny knows where he wants to go beyond _away._ As they drift, Tim notices Danny’s reaching hand and carefully slots his own into its grip. Oddly, the coolness almost soothes. 

They end up sitting on the grass in Pimlico Gardens, near the Westminster Boating Base. Tim doesn’t acknowledge the time the two of them used to hire kayaks and paddle down the Thames, before all this, nor the way Danny leans against him and keeps their hands linked. It feels far too dangerous to feed that little spark inside him that insists that even memoryless, Danny bringing them so close to here must mean he’s still in there. It warms him to an uncomfortable degree, no matter how often he tries to quash it. _What if, what if, what if._

“So…” Tim begins, “Are you okay?”

Danny approximates a laugh, but the cadence is all wrong. “Yeah, I’ll- I’ll be fine. Mostly hungry, now I’m not there.”

Tim watches the shiny wetness to Danny’s eyes and is unconvinced. “You… you don’t have to keep coming to the institute anymore, if you don’t want to. I won’t force you.”

The look of shock Danny gives him has Tim flushing with guilt that might not be entirely undeserved. 

“I mean-“ Tim rushes to reassure. “If just reading about Prentiss scared you that badly, I don’t want you feeling like you have to take on the real thing.” 

Danny looks at Tim blankly, before something crooked and amused creeps onto his face. “You’re kinda dumb sometimes.” 

Indignation pools in Tim’s cheeks. “What!? I’m trying to- _be nice_ here!” 

Danny’s grin goes impish. “Yeah but, like, I really don’t care about the worms at all. They’re not even a little bit scary. It’s…” His playful lilt mellows. “It’s just that place and its _Watcher.”_

Tim gets the distinct feeling he’s missing something. “Because… the institute researches things- people- like you?”

Danny huffs, ripping up blades of grass with a furrowed brow. His fingers twitch in Tim’s hand, “Because it Watches me.”

“Riiight.” 

They sit in silence for a bit and it’s almost comfortable. Eventually, Danny mutters something about getting food, and Tim takes it as his cue to head back to the institute. Part of him burns with the desire to prod just a little deeper into whatever cryptic institute grudge Danny has, but the memory of Danny snapping away from Jon’s questions stills him. _Questions hurt him,_ he’d said. 

\---

Danny ends up following Tim to the institute the next day anyway. 

“Are you sure you’ll be okay?” Tim glances worriedly at Danny as the Magnus Institute creeps into view. 

“There’s like a fuck-you amount of worms around the place now,” Danny reasoned. “I gotta keep my big brother safe.” 

Tim’s step catches on the uneven pavement but is recovered quickly, and the trip goes unacknowledged by them both. Tim clears his throat gently.

“Let me know if it’s too much, okay? …I have to take care of you too.”

It was already too much. Stepping into the archives made Danny feel hollow and delicate, like a fall would shatter him across the long-faded carpet. But Tim was counting on him, and the warmth that coiled in Danny’s gut made him feel a little stronger. 

“I will.”

\---

Danny is stalking between the rows of archive shelving like a tiger in a cage. The Watching has been growing increasingly relentless. It was near the end of the day, Tim was still out wooing some hospital clerks for a peek at their record, and Danny had torn himself away from his desk when he’d caught himself leaning into the nervous energy spiralling off Martin. He wishes the worm lady would just get it over with already so Danny could fuck off and never step foot here again. How Tim could stand living in Beholding’s gaze, he’d never understand. 

It was mid-pace that Danny hears the two very familiar voices ring out. 

“-kage for Jonathan Sims-”

“-Says roight here.”

Danny races to the Archivist’s office in time to see Breekon shove a small package into Martin’s arms. Danny is _ecstatic._

“’Ello Strangers!” 

Danny practically skips up to the gathering, delighted at the surprised look Breekon and Hope share with each other. 

“Ello Carnie-“ Hope crows.

“-Fancy seein’ you here.” Breekon grins. 

“You two are an absolute _sight_ for sore eyes” Danny shoulder-checks Hope, who grins down at him with entertained bemusement. 

“What’re you doing here, Carnie-“

“-Ain’t no place for circus bugs.” 

Danny resolutely ignores the itching Sight along his back. “Yeah I hate it here! But it’s only for a bit longer.” _Hopefully, anyway._

Breekon and Hope exchange a quick glance. Breekon cocks a brow at Danny.

“Nikola said you’d ‘ad a break-“

“-she’s ain’t too ‘appy about it-”

“-hope you know what you’re doin’-“

“-show’s not the same without you.”

Danny feels like he has pop-rocks crackling in his stomach, and his mind whispers a quiet ache for too-bright colours and calliope screamers. 

“I’m still coming back; I just have something else to do right now.” Take care of Tim, make things okay, then back in time for the Unknowing if he was lucky. Danny squeezes some extra cheer into his voice. “But what’s new with the circus? How’s the side-show?”

“Been a while since we watched it-“

“-too boring now-“

“-just some clowns makin’ a fuss-“

“-need’s a proper carnie runnin’ things.”

“Oh stop it you’re making me blush!” Danny throws his hands over his cheeks, glittering eyes peeking up at the delivery men. “I’m doing street shows now.”

Breekon and Hope smirk in tandem. 

“Busking, ey?”

“Very artsy.” 

“Yeah, well.” Danny ducks his head, “I’m enjoying the freedom of it. Get to be a little experimental with my stuff.”

Hope nods sagely. “Have to respect the ‘ntrepreneurial spirit-“

“-can ‘ardly work under the Big Man-“

“-stand with your own class-“

“-that’s what I say-“

“-let the little men create-“

“-Them up top don’t know the first thing about a good show-“

“-classic circus ‘s a little overdone anyhow-“

“-needs some fresh blood to liven things up.”

Danny beams. Breekon claps him on the shoulder.

“Speakin’ of-“

“-how’s about a sneak preview?” 

Danny’s gut twists as Hope jabs a thumb at Martin, who pales under the sudden attention, fists clutching the parcel to his chest like a shield. Danny had entirely forgotten he was there. 

“ _What?”_ Martin squeaks.

Danny felt his smile beginning to slip and draws it back up with renewed fervor: _Keep your show-face on!_

“Oh no I-“ Danny hesitates. He doesn’t really want to scare Martin, and not just because it would upset Tim. Danny is blindsided with the realisation that he _likes_ Martin, with his mumbled poems and sweet tea. “- I’m saving things for my big debut.”

It’s a weak excuse, and Breekon and Hope’s shared stare makes it clear they don’t buy it, but an occasionally merciful feature of the Stranger is that none of its entities ever mind not being in the know all that much. 

_Just as well,_ Danny thinks. Nikola didn’t pry when Danny marched up to her caravan and declared he was taking time off to “ _find myself, if you’ll pardon the pun.”_ He didn’t want to admit to wanting a brother, because that would admit to wanting to _be_ a brother. To crave that sort of identify was just plain embarrassing and, quite honestly, pathetic. Tim felt like a secret, a crack in Danny’s finely painted porcelain facade. 

“Roight then,” Breekon announces. 

“Best be off,” Hope declares. 

“Got more packages to deliver-“

“-never ends for us workin’ class-“

“-we’ll be seeing you then-“

“-best of luck, Carnie.”

Danny smiles warmly at Hope. “Thanks, all the best to you as well. I’ll see you at the big one, if not sooner.”

Breekon and Hope’s eyes light up with a devious little glitter. They raise their hands in tandem and tip their caps at Danny before vanishing up the archive steps. Danny feels the weight of being Watched lighten momentarily as it follows the deliverymen up and out of the institute. 

He wonders if the Watcher chose to ignore Danny, or if simply they can’t hold them both in their View. 

Danny’s then distracted by Martin slumping breathily against the doorframe of the Archivist’s office, legs visibly shaking. 

_“Bloody hell.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I spent an insensible amount of time on Google maps trying to find a nice spot along the Thames for Tim and Danny to have their chat in.


	5. The Friend

Danny is slumped over Tim’s desk in a losing bid for attention when the Archivist all but throws open the door.

“Danny. I’d like to see you in my office, please. For a statement.”

Danny feels Tim tense beside him as he sits himself up to meet the Archivist’s hazel-green gaze. He can see Martin hovering behind the Archivist’s shoulder and his ears register the distinct absence of clicking from Sasha’s keyboard. 

“No, Archivist.” Danny hears the hollow cheer ring in his own ears. “I said I’d give you one statement, and you’ve already had it.”

The Archivist’s eye twitches but his tone remains level. “Martin said you know the deliverymen who gave me this—” he waves a silver lighter in his right hand, web embossing catching the yellowish overhead lighting “—and I’d like to know what I’m dealing with.” 

Danny’s halfway to sneering when Sasha jumps in—

“What’s up with the deliverymen?” 

The Archivist’s eyes drift to her, though Danny feels no less Seen. 

“Both Martin and Rosy can’t describe them beyond that ‘they looked exactly how you’d expect’. And, well,” The Archivist’s gaze flicks back to Danny, “To be quite honest I think Danny’s familiarity with them is suspicious in its own right.” 

“Oh piss off they’re lovely,” Danny grumbles.

“Well  _ excuse me  _ for being suspicious of whatever they’ve left me—” 

“ _ They  _ didn’t leave you anything.” Danny throws his arms up. “They’re deliverymen! They deliver! Breekon and Hope aren’t the ones sending you  _ presents.”  _

There’s a stunned silence before everyone speaks at once.

“What did you just-“

“Weren’t they the ones who-“

“Wait as in the guys from the-“

“ _ You know Breekon and Hope?” _

Danny shoots Tim a puzzled frown. “Uh, yeah? I told you about them, they used to work in the circus?”

Danny watches the gears whir in Tim’s brain. When the lightbulb moment comes, it only twists Tim’s face into deeper confusion. 

“ _ The strongmen?!”  _

Danny shoots him double finger guns and a wink. “Yahtzee!” 

“Um.” Martin looks the picture of befuddlement. “ _ What?”  _

\---

Tim, mercifully, takes the lead in rehashing Danny’s friendship of sorts with Breekon and Hope, with Danny only chipping in the occasional affirmation of how cool and not-a-problem they are. It’s just as Danny regales them with the time Hope had nicked half the costumes in the Ringmaster’s caravan for  _ wealth redistribution  _ that Martin asks:

“So, uh, why did they call you Carnie?” 

Danny blinks. “Oh- um that’s what I was called, in the circus.  _ The Carnie. ‘ _ Cause I, uh, ran the sideshow. _ ”  _

“That was your name?” Sasha asks.

“No, it was… just what I was called.” Danny shrugs almost shyly, though he isn’t sure why. “I um. I didn’t have a name, not until Tim gave me this one.” His eyes skirt to where Tim watches him with an unreadable expression, “And really, I’m, uh, just borrowing it anyway.” 

Discomfort permeates the room, but Danny finds himself without appetite. 

“Right. Well, thank you. For answering.” The Archivist sighs. “I was also hoping you could, examine, the table Breekon and Hope delivered. Perhaps you’d be able to shed some light on its purpose.” 

Danny is getting real sick of giving answers. The Archivist must  _ Know  _ how enlightening runs so against what Danny is, and yet he keeps  _ prying.  _ Danny sighs, he’s also incredibly bored of sitting around doing nothing. 

“Fine.” He mutters, pushing himself to standing. “Lead the way.” 

The walk to the artifact storage is an awkward one. As Danny climbs the steps out of the archives it occurs to him that this is the first time he’s been alone with the Archivist and that this will be his first visit to another section of the institute. It only takes a relaxed stride to keep pace with the Archivist’s trot down the wallpapered halls, and Danny properly registers how much taller he is of the two of them. If Danny couldn’t smell the Eye seeping into him, Danny would be properly tempted to pop the Archivist in the face – time in the archives had not endeared him to Danny. 

Artifact storage is actually much closer to the institute’s main entrance than the archives, which surprises Danny for a reason he isn’t really sure of. He just supposed that if the archives were kept in a basement then the actual  _ good stuff  _ would have to be stashed in a verifiable dungeon, not tucked down a simple corridor near a bubbly receptionist’s desk. 

The door isn’t even locked. Only a stern  _ ‘Caution - Employees Only’ _ sign glued to the hardwood gives any warning as Jon and Danny enter into a cramped reception area, complete with plastic plants and a bored-looking employee fiddling with her phone. She glances up at them as they approach.

“Hey Jon, what can I do for you?” She lazily pockets her phone as she speaks.

“Hello Sonja,” Jon greets. “I’m here to inspect the table that was recently delivered?”

“Sure no worries, just as long as your friend waits out here,” Sonja says, inclining her head at Danny.

“I would really-“

“Gross, we’re not friends.” Danny blurts, earning a distinctly irritated glare from the Archivist and a snort from Sonja. The Archivist pinches his brow.

“Yes, well. I need him to examine the table, anyway.”

Sonja tilts her head and smiles at the Archivist in a way that is not unkind, her vibrant hair flopping over one shoulder. “Only employees are allowed near the artifacts, Jon.” 

“I know but, uh…” 

The Archivist’s gaze flits around the room and it dawns on Danny that this man is winging it. Poorly.

“I’ve got permission!” Danny grins,  _ like an actual professional.  _ “I’m here to do an independent, er,  _ analysis  _ of the artifact.” 

Sonja squints at him. “Aren’t you Tim’s brother?”

“Why yes I am!” Danny chirps as the Archivist blurts:

“ _ How did you know that?” _

_ “ _ They look almost identical, Jon.” Sonja flatlines. “Also, Hannah asked Tim who he was in the cafeteria like three weeks ago. Everyone knows.” 

Danny’s chest does something funny. He’s so taken with the warm, sludgy, melt that it takes a moment to register that the Archivist is stuffing his foot in his mouth again. 

“Er, yes. Right. Well you see-“

“It runs in the family!” Danny gleams, “Spooky stuff, I mean. I’m actually the reason Tim has any interest in the supernatural at all.”

Not a lie, technically, and by the Archivist’s flinch, he also caught the words left unsaid. 

“Right.” Sonja draws out the word. “So that’s what you’ve been doing in the archives? Like, consulting on what’s real?”

“Yep!” Danny’s eyes glitter. “I’m helping, as a  _ consultant.”  _

“Y-yes. He, um, offers a, hm,  _ unique perspective.”  _ The Archivist adds. Perhaps they’re an improv artist in him yet. 

“Yeah, cool, no worries then.” Says Sonja. “Just give me whatever permission Elias has written up for you and we’ll be golden.” 

_ Ah.  _

Danny glances at the Archivist, only to find him already gazing at him imploringly. What did he want Danny to do? He didn’t even know who the hell Elias was. 

“Uh, he said he sent you an email?” Danny takes a stab in the dark. “Maybe he forgot?”

The Archivist tenses slightly and Sonja frowns. A miss then. 

“That doesn’t sound like-“ Sonja is cut off by a  _ ding!  _ from her phone. Her eyes jump to the screen and Danny watches the piercing in her brow jump upwards. “Oh! He just sent it through now. Sorry about the holdup, just procedure you know?”

“Ah, yes. Well, thank you.” Stammers the Archivist, “We’ll be on our way then.” 

Danny’s still staring at Sonja’s phone as he trots after the Archivist through the adjoining door simply marked ‘ _ Artifacts’.  _ That was weird. 

The Archivist exhales palatable relief once the door swings shut behind Danny. He says something about ‘ _ tricking her phone’  _ and ‘ _ thank you’ _ to him but Danny tunes it out in favour of ogling the neat metal shelves lined with fear-stained objects. Many of the artifacts are held in glass containers and, in some cases, bolted metal boxes, but miasma still seeps from them. Danny’s distantly amazed that Sonja herself seemed so untouched, working in such close proximity to— _ Wait is that the calliope? When did that get here?! _

A cough pulls Danny’s attention back to the Archivist, who nods to beyond a solid row of shelving. “It’s down this way.” 

Danny blinks, he’s unconsciously drifted closer to the calliope. “Uh right.” He sheepishly turns his back on it and begins following the Archivist deeper into the room. “Sorry, I just recognised the calliope.”

“You do?” The Archivist shoots it a nervous glance just before it dips from view. “What does it do?”

“It plays music,” Danny smiles. Helpfully, he tacks on, “it’s an instrument.” 

The Archivist looks so affronted Danny can’t quite choke back the laughter hissing through his teeth. 

“I know it’s a  _ bloody-“  _ the Archivist cuts off with a scowl.  _ “Never mind.”  _

Danny feels an inexplicable kinship with the table the moment he lays eyes on it. It doesn’t make sense, it sits unobtrusively in its own little section, sectioned off by a line of tape encasing the floor around it pronouncing ‘ _ Do Not Cross’,  _ and though the intricate pattern twisting across the table’s face is no doubt strange, it is not  _ his  _ brand of wrongness. Unconsciously, he steps forward, toeing the tape line and catches something shift under the webbed lacing, straining against the table’s edges.  _ There, a friend.  _ Danny feels his face split open, offering the friend his largest and toothiest smile. 

“We should break this.” Says Danny, looking back at the Archivist. 

The Archivist, who had followed Danny up to the table, takes a small, cautious, step away, eyeing Danny’s grin uneasily. 

“Martin said the same,” he muttered. Louder, he continues, “So you recognise it then? What is it?”

Danny giggles and watches the friend thrash slightly. Now that he’s spotted the space where the uncanny sits it’s simple to follow their movement. They want  _ out.  _

“I don’t know what the table is,” Danny forces himself to look away from the intricate webbing when he feels himself leaning forwards. “Except that it’s caught a friend. We should let them out.” 

“ _ What?”  _

“The table has bound a creature inside it. I can’t tell what exactly it is – too much thread in the way – but I can feel that it’s like me. I don’t think it was ever a person though, just a Strangeness. They hate it here and want to be set free.” Danny doesn’t register the tingle of static until he’s suddenly aware of its absence, leaving something bitter on his tongue. He wheels on the Archivist, “ _ Don’t do that.”  _

The Archivist startles, eyes blinking rapidly, before his mouth twists in a set line. “I don’t—” the Archivist makes a noise of frustration, “—right.  _ Questions.”  _

Danny did not appreciate that tone  _ nor  _ the eyeroll, but the Archivist powers on before he can comment. 

“If destroying the table is going to- to  _ release  _ some terror on the institute then I’d much rather it stay in one piece.”

Danny feels his scowl drag his face uncomfortably. “But they’re trapped.”

The Archivist eyes the table with clear distaste. “Forgive me if I’m lacking  _ sympathy  _ for whatever that thing may be.” --Danny’s gut twisted— “But it sounds as though the world is safer with it locked away.” The Archivist pauses, “Truthfully, the idea of destroying an artifact in any capacity sits, very poorly, with me. Now, is there anything else you can tell me about it?”

Danny half-snarls, “ _ No. Stop.”  _

The Archivist blinks owlishly at him. “R-Right. Yes, of course.” He fiddles with his shirt cuff briefly. “I’ll relay everything to Sonja so… whatever it is, can be placed under appropriate observation.” 

With that, the Archivist flees the room, leaving Danny to seethe. Out of the corner of his eye, he catches the friend twitch violently in what he interprets as sympathetic impotent anger. Perhaps brashly, he raps his knuckles twice against the tabletop in solidarity.

“Don’t worry,” Danny says, “I won’t leave you stuck there.” 

The friend arcs slowly, and Danny smiles down at it. It’s nice to have someone who  _ gets it. _

As he strides past the calliope on his way to the exit, Danny can’t help but wonder, perhaps unkindly, if the previous Ringmaster had a bit more of a talent for keeping their shit together. 

\---

It’s a little after 2 am when Danny carefully eases the institute’s main doors open. There’s a night guard seated at the front reception’s desk, but his eyes flow over the axe in Danny’s hand without recognition. Danny nods at them with a disarming smile as he heads for the hallway as the guard’s brows pinch. He isn’t sure whether or not Danny should be here, but the uncertainty turns too stifling for him to make a call until Danny is already gone. 

Danny takes a relaxed breath as he reaches the unassuming door to artifacts storage, then tenses with the bizarre revelation that  _ nothing is watching him.  _ He giggles half-hysterically with the image of the big scary Eye needing a nap, and his spirit is only marginally dampened but the discovery that the door is now locked. He casts an unnecessary look around the empty hallway before he hoists his axe up and  _ swings.  _

Splinters crunch under his sneakers as he enters the small reception and makes short work of ‘unlocking’ the entrance to artifacts storage proper. 

The room is much the same as it was during the day, though Danny swears it thrums differently.  _ Perhaps they’re excited,  _ Danny thinks, but whether by him or the simple joy of night he couldn’t guess. 

The table is in the same place as earlier, though it looks as though some sort of fiberglass tank was half-erected around it in the evening. Danny spots the small breathing holes drilled into one of the walls and chuckles to himself at the memory of the Archivist and Sonja discussing  _ containment.  _ Danny steps over a piece of metal frame and knocks the butt of his axe of the table.

“Hello Stranger.”

The friend shudders with anticipation, twisting the carved threads into a messy knot. 

Danny grins impishly. “Sorry for the wait.” He taps the table again. “Let’s do this.”

When the axe connects with the tables, a thunderous _Crack!,_ unnaturally loud, rings through Danny’s skull. He raises for another swing, but needn’t have bothered, as formless not-hands push through the jagged fissure and rips the table open from inside. Danny catches a glimpse of colourless not-hair and sloughing not-skin before he politely averts his gaze and leans casually against his axe. It would be unspeakable to know their skinless form. 

“Welcome back,” Danny lilts, gaze fixed on a small, rusted fork sealed in an airtight glass cube. The back of Danny’s throat feels clogged just looking at it. 

The friend thanks him, though they have no throat to form such sentiments with.

“Just to be perfectly clear, I’m helping you  _ as a friend,  _ and I’d like you to do me a favour in return.” 

The friend tenses, hisses without lips. 

“It’s nothing serious! Don’t worry,” Danny hastens to reassure when he feels a texture-less not-body trace his arm. He inspects an old silver hairbrush. “I just want you to choose a body that isn’t connected to the institute for your next meal. I’ve kind of got some stuff going on here that I don’t want messed with.”

The friend approximates a laugh, swears that they would like nothing more than to get as far away from this fucking place as possible. Danny chuckles along.

“Yeah fuck this place, ay?”

The friend wholeheartedly agrees, and Danny feels himself tugged into motion. Together, they make their way back through artifact storage, Danny with his axe slung casually over one shoulder and the friend half a pace back, just out of view. 

It’s as they approach the exit that Danny catches sight of the calliope again, and he pauses in midstep. The friend knocks into his back slightly, and he feels their presence over his head when they grumble. 

“Sorry,” He chirps. “I just had a thought. Don’t suppose you’d mind doing me another favour, buddy? Totally your call.”

The friend is listening. Danny points his axe at the calliope. “Could you run that back to the circus for me? I’m sure the troupe would love you for it!”

The friend almost snickers, of course you’re part of the circus, it not-speaks. That annoying twittering of yours should have been a dead giveaway.

“Aw don’t be like that. I think I’m very lovely to be around.” 

The friend makes that wet, dribbly laugh again. They’re not one for theatrics, which Danny thinks is an absolute shame. Something like breath tickles his ear as the friend not-murmurs that they’ll return the calliope if Danny tells them what he’s doing in the belly of the Eye. 

Danny sighs. “I hardly know myself. It’s a stupid idea.” He picks his hoodie sleeve, “You’re going to laugh at me, but there’s a human here I’m a little fond of.”

The ensuing moment of silence is a brief reprieve for Danny to brace himself for the howling mirth of the friend. Danny suffers through their taunting as they cross through the reception and back into the hall, though he doesn’t really mind. He  _ is _ being an idiot, and it’s nice to make a friend laugh, especially when they not-snicker over the quality of his lockpicking. 

As they reach the main entrance, Danny goes ahead to greet the nightguard. It only takes a couple of carefully intoned “ _ Should you be here?”  _ and  _ “Did you really see me here?”  _ to convince the man to take a confused walk back home. Hopefully he remembers where it is well enough. 

The friend slinks outside after Danny, and they take a moment to breathe air untainted by the Eye. Overhead, the moon is a thin, barely-seen slither, which Danny interprets as a fortuitous sign. The friend promises that as soon as it’s found a body to snatch it will double-back for the calliope, and Danny gives them  _ The Trophy Room _ ’s address. The calliope will be returned to the circus by the Seamstress’s puppets. 

“Tell them the Carnie sent you…. And if you don’t mind, let’s keep my embarrassing human between us, yeah?” Danny grins ruefully.

And why would they do that?

“We’re friends, aren’t we?” 

The friend takes a moment to mull this over, then quietly agrees. They lean over and press their not-face briefly to the back of Danny’s head, lipless gratitude offered in a gesture strangely intimate. The friend takes off into the night, and Danny makes his way back to Tim’s with a flustered little grin on his face. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Friend :) 
> 
> Sorry this chapter took its time getting finished! Life got a little busy but I have a decent chunck of chapter 6 pre-written so with some luck the next update will be a good bit quicker to make up for it.


	6. Absent

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh worm

The institute has always had an oppressive air to it --something about old buildings, Tim thinks-- but stepping over its threshold today makes the hair on his nape prickle. Beside him, Danny hunches closer to Tim. That in itself isn’t unusual, but wariness peaks out from his glassy eyes with an intensity Tim hasn’t seen since the first time they came to the institute together. Tim hurries them to the archives, vaguely registering a small crowd of people loitering near the hall to artifact storage.  _ Perhaps something new came in? _

Danny conspicuously moves behind Tim as they make their way down the archive steps and into the assistant space. Tim’s halfway through asking what’s wrong when Jon, clearly waiting for them, storms up. Danny shamelessly holds Tim out like a shield.

“I need to  _ speak  _ with your  _ brother.”  _ Jon rumbles.

Tim throws an imploring look at Sasha and Martin over Jon’s head, but Martin just shakes his head and Sasha does a full body shrug: ‘ _ No idea, sorry’. _

“Hey boss,” Tim holds up his hands disarmingly and pastes on the old Stoker Smile. “What’s up?”

“Last night  _ someone,”  _ Jon glares straight at Danny, “broke into artifact storage. The table we received has been destroyed beyond repair, and a certain calliope has vanished from the institute.” 

Tim glances back at Danny, who studiously avoids eye-contact and drums his fingers against Tim’s shoulders.

“Danny.”

Danny whistles softly. Tim feels tired. 

_ “Danny,”  _ Tim can’t believe he’s having this conversation. “Did you break into artifact storage last night?”

“… It was the right thing to do.” Danny mutters. Tim catches sight of Sasha wincing. 

“Jesus  _ fucking--“ _

“He needs to leave.” Jon cuts Tim off, “Sonja can put two and two together, and Elias has made it very clear he will no longer tolerate Danny’s presence in the institute.” Jon’s glare feels like a visceral thing. “I’m inclined to agree.”

Danny’s fingers bunch in the fabric of Tim’s shirt, and suddenly Tim is thrust into being seven again, chasing off a group of bullies from Danny’s class. Their mother had scolded him as she scrubbed his scuffed, clumsy knuckles when they got home, but at night she’d kissed his head and called him  _ Kahu.  _

“Wait a second,” Tim gestures to the archives at large, “What about the worms?”

“We’ll—” Jon hesitates, for a split second, before his expression turns stony. “We’ll have to deal with Prentiss ourselves. We know from Sasha’s experience that they’re susceptible to CO 2 , and we’ve prepared the archives as best we can.” Jon’s scowl deepens. “Besides, I’d feel safer if we didn’t have your brother unleashing more creatures on the institute.”

Martin’s startled “ _ What?!”  _ rings out at the same time Danny blurts “They’re not going to bother the institute! They promised!”

An icy silence descends in the archives, and Tim imagines that the morning’s oppressive aura swells. 

Tim keeps his voice very carefully neutral. “Danny, what are you talking about?”

Danny releases Tim’s shoulders to hug himself. He scuffs his shoe against the carpet. “Uh, well. When I was looking at the table yesterday, I, um, saw a friend in it.” 

“What does  _ that _ mean?” Sasha’s gotten up from her desk, and she peers at Danny as she moves closer.

Danny’s eyes flick to her nervously before jumping to Tim, then settling on the floor. “The table was a—a trap, of some sort. I don’t know how it works but it had, caught, something. Something  _ like me _ . I wanted to let it out, but the Archivist wouldn’t let me. So I figured I’d have to do it myself.” Danny squirms a little. “They were very nice.”

“You said it wasn’t human,” Jon accuses. 

Danny’s eyes glint dangerously. “That doesn’t mean they weren’t nice, _ Archivist _ . Or that they deserve to be trapped here.” 

“It—They?” Martin stutters, “doesn’t kill people, does it?”

Tim feels ice coat his throat as Danny tilt’s his head, eyes wide and genuine and uncaring. “I mean—Probably a little? My whole vegetarian thing, well, I’m the only one I know who does it.”

Tim remembers his little brother picking beetles off the footpath and stretching up on his tiptoes to carefully place them in window planters, where they wouldn’t get stepped on. He feels like he might cry, but settles for running his hand through his hair and feeling the tug against his scalp. He’s painfully aware of the three sets of eyes boring into his back, and feels suddenly pathetic, still believing his brother’s there. Danny looks small and porcelain as he meets Tim’s eyes, and Tim forces his voice gentle so as to not risk any chips. 

“Go home Danny,” He says. “We’ll talk tonight.” 

Something wars on Danny’s face, but his relief is palpable when he wordlessly concedes, free of the institute for now. A small ‘ _ sorry’  _ is whispered only for Tim’s ears as he brushes past to the archive steps. Tim exhales, and tries not to feel guilty at the way the institute’s weight seems to lighten with Danny’s absence. He turns to the others, tries to brush past Sasha’s concern and Martin’s nervousness as he finds Jon watching him with an inscrutable expression. 

“Well,” Tim sighs. “Let’s hear what happened. I’ll try to get the full story out of Danny.”

They don’t talk about it that night, or the next one, or the one after that. When the worms bury their way into Tim’s throat, he burns with the thought that he may never talk to his brother again. 

Later, Elias catches him as he limps away from Jon’s  _ stupid exit statement _ , and gives him a month off to recover. He takes a taxi home, ignores the driver’s curious eyes in the rearview mirror and squeezes his hands into one another to resist the need to  _ itch.  _ He keeps imagining movement in the car’s grubby cushions, things wriggling against his back, and so he perches forwards on the edge of his seat, white-knuckle and straining against the seatbelt, periodically running his hands under his lap to reassure himself that the niggling sensation of  _ something there  _ is just in his head. 

Tim is greeted by an empty apartment. His phone, miraculously unbroken, blinks  _ 4:04 pm  _ at him. Danny wouldn’t be expecting Tim to finish work for another hour – it wasn’t strange that he was out – but Tim feels an aimless panic set into his bones. He runs his hands down his arms, legs, torso. Across his jaw, his neck, carefully feeling along the edges of every piece of medical tape for a broken seal. His calves ache when he moves to the bathroom, and his fingers twitch clumsily as he carefully unbuttons his shirt and lays it by the sink. Tim stands there, intently watching for something rippling under his skin, until he hears the door bang open with a jaunty, whistled showtune. 

Tim gingerly picks up his shirt, inspecting every fold and seam until he was certain that  _ yes, obviously there weren’t any fucking worms in it get a grip  _ before slipping it back on. He grimaces at the feeling of fabric sliding against his skin, nerves alighting with featherlight  _ touch,  _ but he manages to redo his buttons and wander out into the main room with only a couple of discrete worm-checks. 

Danny’s busily stashing away shopping when the bathroom door creaks out Tim’s presence. Danny’s halfway through chirping out a  _ hello  _ when he catches sight of Tim and goes completely still, looking all the world like a lifeless doll, china grin painted on. 

Tim swallows – his voice was shredded. “Hey,” he rasps.

Danny doesn’t so much as blink. 

“Worm’s came,” Tim wets his lips and tries to fill the silence. “Prentiss is dead, by the way.” 

His throat protests and Tim coughs wetly. For a maddening second, all he can think about is the sensation of wriggling masses against his oesophagus and  _ he can’t breathe hecan’tbreathe--  _

Tim feels himself wrapped in cool, ungiving terracotta and he presses back as tightly as he can until his sores burn.  _ Worms can’t get in him,  _ a bizarre part of his brain supplies,  _ he’s safe to touch.  _ Tim shakes against Danny until his breathing slowly returns to him. Only then does Tim realise that Danny is still motionless, still smooth ceramic, and part of Tim is grateful that he doesn’t have to feel breath against him even as the familiar listless mourning brushes against him. 

“We should talk,” Tim mutters into Danny’s collarbone.

“What about?” Danny whispers against Tim’s hair.

_ About the worms. About the institute. About Jon, the circus, you, us.  _

“Everything,” Tim sighs. Danny doesn’t tense—he’s already too rigid—but Tim feels the ghost of it. They both know they’ve been circling around every difficult discussion for the better part of a year, both too keen to hold onto the fragile equilibrium they’d found. 

“Do you want to?”

“ _ No.”  _ Tim groans softly and Danny huffs softly, all at once breath returning to him. 

They don’t talk that night. Danny reassures Tim that he can’t be found in their apartment, but doesn’t press when Tim can’t settle on the couch. He warms up a can of minestrone for Tim –only soft foods until his voice clears up – and makes him pumpkin soup instead when the soft chunks of pasta send Tim retching over the kitchen counter. Danny diligently checks Tim’s back for worms after he’s showered, and Tim doesn’t mention the look of cold fury he catches in the mirror. Tim dreads sleeping, but Danny presses a cold hand to his brother’s and promises he’ll keep watch. Tim  _ knew,  _ technically, that Danny didn’t sleep anymore and had made a valiant show of ignoring that they didn’t need a second bed. That Danny would be awake before and after Tim, slipping muffled sounds of habitation under his door late into the night. It had always been another unsettling thing neither of them acknowledged, but that night, when Tim awakes gasping and shaking and  _ certain something was eating him,  _ Danny’s gargoyle figure at the foot of the bed was a strange comfort. 

_ Kahu.  _ Protector. 

Morning comes. Tim digs out his blender and resolves to get back into protein shakes. Danny digs some spray and wipe out of the bathroom cupboard and Tim barely catches him before he wrecks the couch.

“It’s multipurpose!” Danny exclaims, “The couch is a purpose!”

“You can’t use it on fabric! You’ll bleach it.”

They end up ducking out to the shops for fabric cleaner and leave with more soaps and bug sprays than Tim thinks he’s ever owned. The rest of the day is spent giving their home the biggest clean it’s probably ever experienced— floors mopped, cabinets scrubbed, tiles scoured. It’s hard work. Tim’s wounds gripe at him and frequent breaks are unavoidable, but when it’s all done Tim can collapse into the couch without phantoms crawling across his skin. 

On day three Tim has to visit a doctor to get his dressings changed, and is  _ dressed down  _ about overexerting himself while recovering. Danny takes it upon himself to be a little shit and try turning the pages for Tim when he’s reading,  _ ‘since you’re resting!’.  _ They end up scrapping on the couch until Tim rolls off and his half-scabbed wounds make sure he won’t forgot it. 

On day four Danny makes them both hot chocolates. It’s disgustingly sweet, but Tim doesn’t complain. 

Day five Tim wakes up  _ itching.  _ It’s not the worms, both Danny and an on-call doctor assure him, it’s just that scabs are  _ shit and itch sometimes.  _ Danny gets fed up with reminding Tim not to scratch himself and just whacks him whenever he catches him. They’re both snappish and Danny ducks out for an hour for a break and a meal. The empty space in the apartment eats at Tim, and he cries and cries and cries like he hadn’t allowed himself to since the attack. Danny finds him curled up in the shower cubicle (all tiles, no worms), utterly spent of tears. Danny promises not to leave him alone again, but Tim privately thinks he needed the space. 

Day six Tim gets the all-clear for eating solids and his dressings are removed. His body is covered in ugly, itchy, bumpy scabs that stand out angry and purple against his bronze skin. Danny calls them pebbles, and Tim lowkey wishes he’d get over his poetry thing. It’s good to have the bandages off though, and the uneven texture of his skin discourages his compulsive worm checking. He doesn’t want to touch himself. 

On day seven Tim laments being stuck inside all day. He wishes he were well enough to go camping. Sasha calls him in the afternoon and Tim realises how much he’d missed her voice. She says the archive squad should all hang out when he’s feeling better, and Tim says he couldn’t imagine anything better. He rings up Martin immediately afterwards, riding high on Sasha’s good example, and he answers with a startled “ _ T-Tim? What’s wrong?” _ . Guilt pools low in Tim’s stomach, and he throws some extra cheer in his voice as he assures that “ _ Yeah, I’m fine. Just a little stir-crazy, you know? Wanted to check in.”  _ Martin admits he hasn’t been sleeping well, but he’ll be moving into a new flat in a couple of days, might help. Martin asks if he’s heard from Jon, which Tim can’t help but snort at-- the last few days at work had been frosty, to say the least. 

Sasha texts on day eight, and they hash out a visit on Saturday. Danny is unexpectedly chipper about having visitors, but Tim isn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

On day nine the first scabs start dropping off, leaving fresh, shiny, pink scars dotting his chest and face. Danny makes an extremely obnoxious joke about skin confetti and Tim stuffs a socked foot in his face. 

On day ten, fifteen minutes after Martin and Sasha were due to arrive, Tim’s phone rings.

“ _ Where the hell is your building?”  _ Sasha huffs, exasperated. “ _ I’ve been running up and down the street and I can’t find it anywhere.”  _

“Oh, we’re on Stansfield Road, near—”

“ _ Yes, I know, Tim. I’m on Stansfield right now and I’ve walked past every house and I cannot find your building for the life of me! I’ve found Martin though, he’s also lost.”  _

_ “Hi Tim!”  _ Martin calls tinnily through the phone. 

“Heya, Martin,” Tim grins. “I don’t know how you can miss us. We’re the big brick building with— _ wait. _ ” Tim groans. “Danny?”

Danny doesn’t glance up from whatever he’s furiously scrawling at the kitchen counter. “Mmm?” 

“Sasha and Martin can’t find our flat.”

Danny whips around, almost toppling off his stool. “Oh shit sorry that’s my bad.” 

Tim suppresses a sigh, “Yeah alright. Sorry Sash, Danny’s coming out to grab you now—” Tim shoots a meaningful look at Danny who grouchily gets up and starts toeing on his shoes. 

“ _ Huh? Oh, that’s okay. If you could just tell us where exactly—” _

_ “ _ No, it’s one of his spooky bullshit things,” Tim groans as the door closes softly behind Danny. “He ‘ _ makes this place hard to find’  _ or some shit. I’ve had to start picking up all my mail from the post office because it kept getting lost.” 

“ _ Sucks to be you, I guess.”  _

Tim cracks a grin, “Oh  _ Sasha,  _ how you wound me!” 

Sasha’s little, tinny laugh sends butterflies through Tim.

“ _ Oh shut up you—Oh! I see Danny. Wow okay turns out we were standing right outside your building, but just couldn’t… see it? Weird. Anyway, see you in a bit!”  _

“Seeya,” Tim echoes. 

The reason behind Danny’s enthusiasm becomes apparent the second Sasha and Martin have taken off their shoes. 

“I’m going out!” Danny declares, producing a backpack from seemingly nowhere and waving merrily at the room. Of course he’d be keen to get out of the house while he could—Tim wasn’t the only one who’d been cooped up this last week. 

“Bye Danny,” Tim waves back. It was probably better this way honestly, Tim could see the small lines of relief on Martin’s face when Danny trotted off. 

“So,” Sasha drawls, taking in the sparsely furnished room: kitchen, two stools, couch, coffee table, bookshelves, TV. “It’s not the worst bachelor pad I’ve ever seen, but you’re on thin ice.”

Tim clutches at his chest and gestures dramatically at the shaggy yellow carpet by his feet. “How dare you, we  _ accessorise.  _ Look! We have two cushions  _ and  _ a throw blanket on the couch alone!”

“Yeah Sasha, don’t be mean,” Martin pointed at a truly atrocious pot-shape-thing Danny made last Christmas. “They’ve got, uh, whatever this is supposed to be.”

“Holy shit,” Sasha starts giggling uncontrollably as she takes in the ridiculous clusters of Danny’s Weird Bullshit littering almost every surface of their flat. “What is  _ this? _ ”

Tim grimaces at the half-melted  _ Trolls  _ doll, complete with 28 nails and pins driven through it’s small, plastic body. “Look I can’t throw it out. Danny gave it to me for my birthday.” 

Sasha buckles over with wheezing laughter. Martin looks Tim with wide, frightened eyes.

“ _ Um. Why?”  _ He squeaks. 

“Honestly? I have no clue. He just gave it to me and said it hated cops but loves to party.” Sasha pumps a fist in solidarity. Tim feels his lips twitch upwards “In his defence, it was his first go at celebrating a birthday, so I think he was a little confused about how presents work.” 

“Oh.” Martin looks at the doll wordlessly, but Tim catches the way he fights down a smile. Sasha gets herself upright.

“Wait, okay, you have to tell us the stories behind all this weird junk.”

Tim grins at her. “It’s pretty much all the same thing: Danny gets into a hobby, makes a bunch of freaky shit, and when he moves on I throw everything out except for the ones he gives me, because I’d feel bad if he thought I didn’t appreciate him making me a scary little murder doll.” 

“Aww, cute.” Sasha’s nose crinkles in amusement as she pokes a painted stone which featured a mural of what Tim had generously decided was an animal. 

“Oh!” Martin jerks up suddenly. “Food!”

“Uh.” Says Tim, eloquently. 

“Oh yeah right,” says Sasha, pacing the small way across the room to the kitchen area. “We brought food and drinks! Do you mind if we use the fridge?” 

She already had the fridge door open, and was halfway through jamming her tote bag onto one of the shelves, so Tim let a little sardonic lilt drip into his voice when he called “Yeah sure no worries,  _ Mi casa es tu casa _ .”

“Great!” She calls back, and Tim rolls his eyes as he motions for Martin to come join him on the couch, for which he earns a grateful little smile. 

“So, what have you been up to?” Martin asks.

Tim smiles wryly at him. “Not much really. Talking to Danny, mostly.”

“It’s weird seeing you two together.” Sasha says as she makes her way over to the couch. It’s a small thing, completely full with Tim and Martin squished side by side, so Tim thinks he’s being nothing but helpful when he pats his lap invitingly. Sasha rolls her eyes but slips down onto him anyway, propping her elbows up on the armrest and spreading her long legs out over Martin. Tim winds his arms around her waist, and Martin suddenly decides the ceiling is very interesting as his ears glow bright pink. 

“It’s impossible to get you to take anything seriously normally,” Sasha continues, “But when Danny’s in the room you’re suddenly sensible! I honestly didn’t think you had it in you.” 

Tim makes a face. “No.” 

He catches Martin’s amusement from the corner of his eye.

“No?” Sasha’s eyes twinkle.

“Fake and not real.”

Martin leans over to whisper conspiratorially to Sasha, “It’s the big brother gene.”

Tim gives Martin a look of utter betrayal. “Why am I being bullied? I was eaten by worms!”

It’s a joke, but Martin’s grin is strained and Sasha’s hand gently rests on Tim’s forearm. Softly, she asks, “How are you, by the way? I wasn’t sure if we should bring that up.”

“I’m fine,” Tim sighs, and is surprised to find that he is, mostly. “I know she’s dead now, I mean I heard the scream, and I guess I feel safe here? A cool little quirk of Danny making our flat a Royal Post blackout zone is that even if there were any worms around, they couldn’t find me here.”

“Really?” Martin’s voice has an intensity to it Tim can’t quite place.

“Perks of living with a paranormal entity?” Tim shrugged. “In-built scrambler.”

“Huh,” Martin stares down at crevices of the shaggy carpet, teeth worrying his lower lip. “Do you— Hm. Do you think Danny could, do that, for me? To my place?” 

“I-“ Tim pauses, silence settling over the three as he thinks. Two weeks locked in his flat, months in the archives. Tim settles an arm over the back of the couch, pressed against Martin’s shoulders. “I  _ think  _ so? Maybe? I’ll ask him when he gets back.” 

Martin gives him a small, hopeful smile and for a moment Tim forgets the itch in his bones. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Infestation day babyyy
> 
> So I might have squished the canon timeline a little to get events to line up nicely, but I think we've been long overdue the Prentiss attack! I hope the aftermath lives up to people's expectations! 
> 
> Also I wanted to say a massive thank you to you all for pushing us past 50 comments on this story! I really wasn't sure what kind of reception to expect with this being my first work, but you've all been wonderfully encouraging!
> 
> Also! You may have noticed a couple of Hawaiian words floating around this chapter! I personally headcanon Tim to be Polynesian, so some nods to that will crop up every once in a while. I've been reading up to try and be as sensitive as possible with any depictions I make in that regard, but I am no means an expert on Hawaiian culture or language. As a result, I intend to keep references to Tim and Danny's heritage relatively light to avoid misrepresenting anyone. If you do notice any mistakes on my part please correct me so I can learn and make corrections as needed.


	7. Camp Lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes love is a bucket on fire

Conversation ebbed and flowed into the early evening. At some point drinks were fetched from the fridge and conversation veered away from work and worms and monsters into giggling over office gossip (Tom had gotten back with Claire from accounting  _ again) _ and stories from uni heydays. It was nice, Tim thought, to just have people around. He’d always been social, but keeping Danny a secret had necessitated that Tim keep his guard up at every work function, that every date led back to  _ their  _ place, and that he rarely called back. He knocks Sasha on the shoulder and hopes she knows it means ‘ _ thank you’. _ He didn’t know what he’d do without her in his corner. 

It was as Martin was passing around plates of takeout that Danny made his return, smiling triumphantly and clutching  _ three  _ bulging garbage bags. 

“I’m back! I—” Danny cuts off as he spots Sasha and Martin gaping at him. “Oh, you’re still here! Uh,” Danny’s eyes dart to his bag and then back to them, “Hello.”

Tim feels a sinking sense of trepidation as Danny kicks off his shoes and tries to innocently deposit his haul into a corner of the room. 

“Um, so, please don’t look in these bags—” Tim’s apprehension spikes “—there’s nothing bad in them!” Danny continues, “It’s just things for me. Me things.” 

Tim meets Danny’s sheepish gaze and vaguely wonders what the hell his life is. “Look, just promise me there isn’t a dead animal in there or something.”

“Sure!”

“Wait.” Martin blurts. “ _ Do you actually--?”  _

“Wha—Oh! No, no I don’t, promise!” Danny shakes his hands vehemently. “No dead animals! Not even any alive ones in there, in fact!” 

Tim catches Sasha looking somewhere between concerned and amused, and he heaves a sigh. “Cool, great. I’ll leave your garbage alone but please tell me it won’t stay there forever.”

Danny beams at him. “Yeah I’ll be done with it like tomorrow or something.” 

Tim nods and a small silence descends over the room as Danny hovers awkwardly, frowning at the takeout. 

“Uh,” Danny stammers. “I would like to use the living room, for me things.” 

Tim grimaces. Sharing the cramped one-bedroom flat had resulted in the living room becoming Danny’s defacto space, and the strange little tango that inevitably cropped up in the rare instances Danny wanted privacy always left Tim with the odd feeling he was being sent to his room for timeout. The confused glances between Sasha and Martin did little to help.

“How long for, exactly?” Tim eyed a particularly lumpy garbage bag suspiciously. 

“Just a bit!” Danny was smiling, but Tim could read the nervous jitter in his hands. 

When it came to Danny,  _ just a bit  _ could be anything between a minute and two hours, but Tim knew how hard Danny had been trying since he come home bitten and home hollowed-out, and knew their relationship was one of compromise, both making space for a brother they hoped was there. 

Tim glanced, almost bashful, at Martin and Sasha, and nodded towards his bedroom door. “Do you guys mind?” 

Sasha and Martin exchange a quick and silent conversation before nodding and beginning to gather up the takeout, mercifully not asking any questions. Tim moves to grab drinks, and the three of them successfully relocate to the floor of Tim’s room, Danny dancing around them in a way Tim is sure is meant to be helpful but feel closer to being hounded. When the door shuts behind them with a quiet  _ click  _ Sasha sits herself against Tim’s bed and hum lightly.

“So,” She says, “What was all that?”

Tim flops down on the carpet—a scruffy almost-green thing that he resents the landlord for—and gestures for Martin to take his desk chair when he catches him standing uncertainly by his clothes rack. 

“One bedroom,” Tim sighs. “Danny gets the living room.” 

“Ah,” Sasha nods in understanding. From the desk, Martin frowns.

“He doesn’t sleep on the couch, does he? It’s tiny.”

“Nah,” Tim shoots him a rueful grin, “He doesn’t sleep at all, actually.”

“ _ Ah.” _

Tim catches a muffled  _ thump  _ through the door and reaches for his drink. 

The three of them eat quietly, but not uncomfortably. Martin ends up joining Tim and Sasha on the floor – “ _ I just don’t want to feel like I’m looming over you both—shut up! I’m not  _ that  _ tall.” –  _ and if either of the others notice the grim set of Tim’s mouth as he avoids the pasta salad, no one mentions it. 

It’s right as Tim has  _ almost  _ cajoled Martin into a game of  _ Never Have I Ever  _ that his bedroom door creaks open and Danny pokes his head through shyly. 

“You can come out now.” The timid note in Danny’s lilt throws Tim for a complete loop, and he cautiously approaches the living room expecting to see the place on fire. 

He isn’t  _ entirely _ wrong. Danny skips back from the door and waves his hands  _ Ta-dah!  _ as Tim blinks owlishly around the room. Danny’s turned off all the lights and pulled the curtains, leaving the fairy lights haphazardly… ductapped?...  __ to twinkle a soft glow over branches that have been bunched together in a childish imitation of bushes. The couch has been pushed forwards, and sheets and pillows hang off it in what is unmistakably a pillow fort, and there, in the centre of the room, is a metal bucket that has a  _ straight up fire  _ happily crackling away in it. 

Danny fidgets as Tim gapes. He can feel Sasha and Martin peering around Tim’s shoulders.

“I, um,” Danny takes a deep breath and gives Tim a crooked, hopeful, smile. “You said you wanted to go camping. But, uh, you still need to rest so…” He gestures to the fort, “I thought we could do a camp here.” 

Tim feels a rush of thick warmth pool in his chest, and grins back at Danny, who’s meek little smile grows straight and wide and sure in response. 

“Thanks Danny,” Tim half-murmurs, just as Martin points at the fire and cuts in:

“Isn’t that going to set off the smoke alarm?”

“ _ No,  _ I’m not  _ stupid.”  _ Danny rolls his eyes and points triumphantly, “I took out the batteries!” 

Tim snorts before he can stop himself. Danny practically vibrates with mirth as Tim forcefully reigns himself in;  _ he shouldn’t be encouraging tampering with smoke alarms. _

“Danny, you can’t just set fires in the house.” Tim ignored the cheeriness in his voice.  _ This was serious.  _

“But I got marshmallows,” Danny strolls over to the fort, _or the_ _tent,_ Tim supposes, and reveals a pile of junk food hidden under a cushion “We can cook them. And!” Danny points emphatically at a pot near the TV cabinet, “I have a bucket of water for safety! Well, a pot of water, we only have one bucket and it’s on fire right now.” 

Tim feels an unmistakable fondness overcome him as he drops his token lecture and settles down under the fort besides Danny. He isn’t Tim’s brother,  _ but,  _ Tim thinks as Sasha and Martin rib Danny for apparently sawing a bunch of branches off street trees to bring in some nature,  _ he’s something close.  _

It’s only later, when Sasha mentions it’s getting late and gives Tim a meaningful look, that he remembers his promise to Martin.

“Hey,” Tim nudges Danny softly, sleepy ‘ _ Hmmm?’  _ floats from where Danny’s splayed himself on the floor. “Do you think you could monster-proof Martin’s flat too? Like ours?” 

“I dunno, really.” Danny hefts himself to sitting in a smooth, tumbling motion. “I mean, it’s not like I painted some magic seal on the door or something. It’s a… side effect? Of me. I think?” Danny rubs his hands together gently; a very soft scraping sound reaches Tim’s ears. “I can, anonymise things? So a side effect of me being here all the time is that the house is kind of Unknowable? I think I  _ could  _ do the same to Martin’s home, and I’d like to,” Danny flicked his gaze to Martin, “But I’m not really sure  _ how  _ to do it, you know, consciously.” 

Danny puts his head on his chin in thought and pulls up a knee, striking what Tim distantly registers as a warped mirror-image of  _ The Thinker.  _ Danny speaks and moves and feels in overemphasis, clearly flagging every gesture and overacting every noise of contemplation with a whole-bodied head tilt. In the first couple of months of cohabitation, Tim had thought Danny’s almost comical mannerisms were mocking, a thing playing at human, but now it strikes him more as an actor high up on a stage, making sure his feelings are large enough to be seen from the back rows.  _ Danny had always been one to wear his heart on his sleeve _ , Tim thinks.

“It’s okay if you can’t,” Martin offers softly. 

Danny looks up sharply at him. “No I- I think I can! I’m almost positive it’s possible! I’d just need to go back to the circus—or maybe the Toymaker? – and ask how to do it. I know we’ve hidden heaps of places before, so someone has to know!” 

Tim’s fingers dug into the flesh of his calf, sending a white jolt of pain through a cluster of scabs. 

“O-Oh! That’d be great, if you could.” Martin rubbed at the back of his head self-consciously. “I-I’ve been having trouble sleeping, since,  _ you know.”  _

“Mm.”

The fire glinted Strangely off Danny’s glassy eyes, though Tim was certain the steely anger he saw in them wasn’t simply reflected sparks. Though it wasn’t intentionally and dutifully broadcast in carefully scripted gestures, the still woodenness of Danny’s upset was deafening in his cheer’s absence. 

Danny promises to look into it, and Sasha admits that she’d like a seal of some sort too, if he manages it. Michael hasn’t made itself known to her again, but Sasha admits she’d rest easier if it lost her address. They wrap it up shortly after that, the night snuffing itself out with the dying fire. Tim presses a chaste kiss to Sasha’s cheek and thanks her for organising this as she steps back into her shoes, and she smiles back and tells him not to be an idiot. Martin says something probably sweet and earnest to Danny, and he gives Tim a hug on his way out the door. It’s a gentle end to the day, and Tim feels a little tug of discomfort as Danny leads him back under the fort. It’s so tempting, as it always is, to let the difficult slip past them as they wallow in delicate comfort. 

“We need to talk,” Tim ventures, and Danny stiffens like a marionette.

“What about?” He asks quietly, running his hands over a velvety cushion. The warm, dappled fairy lights soften Danny into fresh clay, earthy and alive. 

“Christ, I don’t know where to start.” A dry, humourless laugh leaves Tim and Danny gives a small, painted smirk in answer. Tim cups a hand over Danny’s own. “Tonight was really nice, thank you for all this.”

Danny’s mouth lilts to the side, coquettish. 

“S’alright.” He mumbles.

Tim grins at him. “I don’t want to wreck the night by having a big feelings jam—”

“ _ Ohthankgod.”  _

“—But.” Tim looks him in the eye. “We can’t just keep putting this off. Again.” Tim’s eyes flick to the dying embers in the weird little bucket fire and a half-idea forms in his mind. “I know you said questions are  _ painful, _ or something, but I… Is there a way to make it easier for you?” 

“Oh! Um.” Danny looks startled, squinting at Tim with his mouth in an uncomfortable twist. “It’s not—I mean. Normal questions are fine? You just asked me one.” 

Tim frowns at Danny. “What’s a not normal question, exactly?”

“You know, like  _ Interrogating. _ I just want a bit of… like… politeness?” 

Tim hisses a breath out his nose. The answer feels unsatisfying, like he should tug just a  _ little bit firmer— _

_ No.  _ He wasn't forcing this. 

“So Jon just wasn’t nice enough for you?” 

Danny brightens immediately. “Yeah! He’s rude!” 

“Yeah I—look. Alright.” Tim wants to slump over in defeat.  _ Just be nicer, Christ Jon. _ “Let’s do a proper camping trip, in the last week before I have to go back to work. We’ll be stuck by ourselves out in the wild, so we’ll  _ have  _ to talk to each other then.” 

Danny’s eyes glimmer wetly in the low light, rich brown swallowed to near-black, and he gives Tim a full-faced smile. It wobbles at the edges, a slight crease in otherwise perfect symmetry, and he nods.

Danny insists on Tim stuffing all his blankets under the fort for the night—“ _ It’s camping! You have to sleep rough.” –  _ and Tim, even fully on board with the idea, still puts in a token protest so Danny has the opportunity to pitch how cool his pillow fort is,  _ actually. _ It’s as Tim’s squeezing his legs under the canopy and as Danny goes to ‘ _ turn off the stars’  _ that Tim thinks to mumble a final shot into the dark.

“Also, you’re not going  _ anywhere  _ near the circus.” 

\---

The following week passes quietly. Danny, apparently done with poems, dives headfirst into camp preparation with overwhelming enthusiasm. Watching Danny rediscover campsites and hiking spots as he fussed over their itinerary sent a strange, wistful sort of deja vu through Tim. They’d been boy scouts when they were younger, and after their first official camp Danny had begged their parents to take them on their own family camps, and Tim had been caught up in Danny’s whirlwind of excitement as he swore that if they could plan out a camp trip  _ perfectly  _ themselves there was no way mum and dad could say no. 

Sitting on the lounge carpet, maps and pamphlets scattered all around them, Tim couldn’t help but feel he was 14 again, searching up ' _ camps with cool bugs'  _ on the school library computer while Danny vibrated with excitement over his shoulder. 

“How about here? I read that brown bears still live there!” 

Tim glanced at the printed woodlands Danny was waving in his face, and felt his insides do something funny. 

“We’ve been there before. Went to celebrate me getting my first publishing job.”

Danny softened as he quietly considered the glossy brochure. “Oh. Did we see any bears?”

Tim grinned. “I met a couple of German tourists. Great lads,  _ exceptional  _ company.”

“ _ Ah.”  _ Danny sniggered and Tim settled back into his own searching. He hadn’t been camping since  _ Danny _ , and recovering old forum accounts and half-remembered blog posts stirred an odd feeling of displacement in him, as though he wasn’t quite who he remembers being. Between the awkward bouts of stumbling over who they’re supposed to be, however, Tim took comfort in the way they slotted into each other’s gaps. 

\---

On Day 21, seven days before Tim was due back at the institute, Tim rolled out of bed at 5am to begin the long drive to Dartmoor. They’d almost decided against proper wild-camping, Danny having forgotten most of his camping know-how rang all sorts of alarm bells, but ultimately the fact that Danny was a living terracotta person who didn’t really need to eat or sleep diminished most typical camping-concerns. Additionally, Danny had been putting those sleepless hours to good use and giving himself a crash course in all things camping. 

They’d packed Tim’s car the night before with dusty tents and coolers tucked away in their parents’ garage. Tim had gone alone of course: Danny had tried to reintroduce himself once, to disastrous effect.  _ Aka.lau _ , their mother had said.  _ Ghost _ . 

His dad had clapped him on the shoulder as he dragged his old sleeping bag out from under a long-discarded surfboard. 

“It’s good to see you getting out again.”

Tim’s father was a gruff man, worn stony with the loss of Danny. Tim had inherited his tall frame and square jaw, but his hair and skin was coloured with his mother’s warm bronze. Tim nodded at his dad and together they tiptoed around china by their feet as they hauled out dusty supplies. 

Now, in the car, Tim watches Danny squirm around in the passenger seat as he checks and re-checks his kit, and thinks they could perhaps try again. 

It’s close to 10am when they finally pull in at Dartmoor National Park, and another half hour before they’re done checking in with the park staff and being reminded, in very strong terms, where the wild camp zones were in the park. Danny was practically vibrating with excitement as they unloaded their packs, skipping ahead up the dirt trail to gawk over every plant and bird that caught his eye. It was like he’d awoken all of his past hobbies at once, flitting between raving about bird-watching, hiking, survival skills, orienteering and back again as they set off for the Greena Ball rocks. The pocks littering Tim’s calves tugged uncomfortably as he stretched his legs over the uneven track, but soon enough they faded into the satisfying ache of exercise. Tim has missed movement. 

Eventually, their path intersects with Dead Lake, and the two of them double-check their map and compass before heading off the trail, following the modest lake towards the little patch of land they’d clumsily circled in the valley of the Greena Ball, against the River Walkham. August had gifted them a pleasant 15-degree day, though clouds still lingered from the rain yesterday, leaving the grass slick with dew and mud. Danny had wandered up to the lakeside to look for dragonflies and had a spectacular tumble on the bankside, clawing at the fresh grass to keep from sliding into the water. Tim had been laughing so hard he’d also lost traction when he offered Danny a hand, and they’d both reached their camp spot sopping and muddy. 

Danny took charge of tent erection, keen to relearn a lost skill, and Tim cleared a space for the portable gas cooker he’d brought. Part of him had wanted to just set out and cook everything over an open fire, but a quick glance at the glistening woods confirmed his suspicions that finding any sort of dry wood would have been near impossible. It was as Tim was pulling out their sleeping bags (not that Danny strictly needed one) that he heard his brother whisper a quiet “ _ Fuck.”  _

_ “ _ Hm?” Tim asked. He looked at where Danny was crouched in front of the tent, rummaging through his own backpack. The tent was built for four people to squeeze inside, a relic from family camps, and might have been a bit glamourous for just the two of them had they both not been so tall. Tents, in Tim’s experience, tended to lack legroom. 

Danny looked up at Tim with wide eyes. “Food’s wet.”

“ _ Shit.”  _ Tim rushed over to Danny’s side and started picking through apples and protein bars to see what was wrecked. 

Thankfully, most of their food stayed safe in wrappers and tins, through an opened packet of pasta and the bread was unsalvageable. Tim morosely dumped the soggy carbs into a sturdy rubbish bag that he hung from a tree. Almost worse than the loss of food was that it would hang over their heads all week before they’d have to shamefully carry it away with them when they left the park.  _ Leave only footprints,  _ and all that. 

It was mid afternoon when the two of them finished settling themselves. The nylon tent stood proudly amongst the twiggy trees, orange against green. The gas cooker sat in a dirt patch ringed by stones, with a couple of small fold-out chairs perched either side. Their backpacks rested inside the tent by the air mats, and their food was secured in a lockable cooler by the tent entrance. 

Tim looked down at his muddy clothes and then to the river at their backs. The River Walkham was a pretty, shallow thing. Upstream, water bubbled over small rocky waterfalls and fizzed white in messy streams, not quite deep enough for white-water rafting. They’d chosen this particular site for the sudden deep valley in the river, creating a large pond-like area before the river returned to babbling along downstream. All in all, a perfect spot for a swim and washup. 

Tim leaned against a dark tree trunk and shucked his boots and socks before hanging them carefully over a low-hanging branch. When he was 13 a monstrously fat caterpillar had made itself home in his heelies when he was at a friend’s pool, and he’d been determined to never have a repeat of that particular squelching again. Shaking off the memory –and if he double checked that his shoes hung at an uninviting angle for any crawly things, that was between him and the trees—Tim cocked his head towards the river and looked at Danny meaningfully. 

“You coming in?” 

Later, Tim discovered that Danny could not only sit in the icy water for hours with barely a distant register of the chill, he also didn’t have the decency to warm up at all afterwards. He was made aware of this when Danny decided it would be fun to dart his hands under Tim’s thermals and press his frozen digits to Tim’s goosy skin, kickstarting a small wrestling bout over the moss, which they both walked away from thinking themselves the winner. Danny had always run cool, but never before had Tim considered that he might not have  _ any  _ body heat at all, and Tim ordered Danny to hold his hands over the cooker whilst he improvised a chilli con carne thing out of what was intended to be Bolognese sauce to heat him up. 

In the morning Tim was awoken by the bastard slapping his  _ awful cold dewey hands  _ on his cheeks, he found the chill didn’t bite as much as he might have expected. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again!
> 
> So it's been a little while, but I'm back! I hope you all enjoy how tooth rotting this chapter got but I think we could all use a little fluff right now.
> 
> Apologies for the long gap between updates I won't get into too much detail but there's been a few health scares in my family and it took up most of my time and energy. 
> 
> Also extra thank you to Silvreyas for getting me motivated to finish off this chapter!


	8. Little Talks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Conversations by camp light.

_Night 1_

There’s no campfire, but the wispy rustling of branches in the night breeze fills the space of crackling flames, accompanied by the low hum of an electric lantern and the flapping moths it invites. Tim lays his now-empty bowl beside him, sides sticky with the remnants of what was decidedly glorified pasta sauce with some chilli flakes mixed in. Danny stargazes beside him, though Dartmoor is far too central to avoid the sky being washed out by city lights. 

Tim takes a deep breath, drawing out the moment, before speaking.

“So. Why’d you steal the calliope?” 

Danny’s mouth straightens into a thin, displeased line, though his gaze stays focused skywards. “Oh, are we talking now?”

“Yeah, I know it sucks,” Tim allows himself a small grin as Danny huffs a laugh, “But we’ll start off easy: what’s the deal with the organ?”

Danny’s eyes glint in the artificial light as they swivel to Tim. “It belongs to the circus. I have no idea how our _esteemed Ringmaster_ managed to lose the bloody thing, but it’s an important part of our show and I thought I’d better return it.”

Danny’s head drifts downwards as he talks, his hands fluttering unconsciously to a stick so he can jab at the ground. Tim watches little holes being poked through the green carpet underfoot as he notes the scorn slithering into Danny’s voice, the distasteful twitch of his nose on _Ringmaster._

“Yeah?” Cautious. Neutral. 

Danny wrinkles his nose and hums, “Yeah. It doesn’t belong at the institute.”

Tim tucks away his little discovery and lets the thread fall away.

“What’s it do?”

“Plays music, duh.” 

“ _Yeah but-“_ Danny grins at Tim in a way that can only be described as shit-eating, earning a _very_ put-upon sigh. “There’s no way it’s a normal calliope. Seriously, what’s its deal?”

Danny lolls his head to the side and flicks his eyes up, “Uh, it’s sort of like a… call, I think? It lets people know the circus is in town. _Roll up, roll up!_ Yanno?” 

“So it lures people to the spooky murder circus?” Tim keeps his tone light, absently scratching a cluster of scars over his wrist. 

Danny bends awkwardly, eyes floating anywhere that isn’t Tim’s face. “… _I guess_. I think it’s also what kept them there? Like, hearing it would get the audience in the zone to, well, be an audience.” Danny pauses, and soft enough that Tim isn’t sure he was meant to hear it, muses, “Who knows what the fuck they’ve been doing without it.” 

“That,” Tim’s tongue feels heavy, “Is not great.” 

Danny bristles slightly, “Yeah, well. I’m trying to be honest.”

“Yeah, no I- I appreciate it, _really._ But I can be honest about not liking it, too.”

“I don’t like your job either.”

“My job doesn’t _kill people-_ I. Sorry, not the point.” Tim takes a deep breath. “We can talk about the Circus tomorrow or something, tonight’s just about you breaking into artifact storage.”

“Oh, is that what _the agenda_ says?” Danny’s voice goes playful, though a strained undercurrent remains. 

Tim catches the mood swing and lets the momentum carry him away from his thoughts. _Standing in that stone theatre unable to move as that thing twirled in impressionistic strokes-_

“Oh shut up. We can’t be trusted with just _talking;_ we’ll both sprint for the hills any time the conversation gets deeper than the weather.”

“It _is_ a nice night tonight, very still.” 

“ _Danny.”_

 _“_ I’m joking! I know, you’re right. I place my full trust in your awful agenda.”

Tim steadies another breath and encourages himself to smile. When Tim had told her the plan, Sasha had badgered him into writing a physical list of things they needed to talk about. It felt needlessly formal, but Tim found a small amount of comfort in the battered list scribbled on the back of a petrol station receipt. 

“Cheers,” Mentally, Tim hops down the list, “Next up: the monster you freed.”

Danny, for his part, takes the sudden jump in stride, “What about them?”

Tim chews his lip. “You said it killed people.”

“They.”

“What?”

“They.”

_…Oh._

“Right. _They_ killed people.”

Danny fidgets and kicks his feet out slightly. “… Yeah, but like I said, that’s pretty -- normal? And I know it’s _bad_ or whatever but I don’t know what you want me to do about it.”

“It’s just—Look. If there’s some _thing_ that was trapped in the institute where it can’t hurt people, that’s better than it being out in the world. Just because _you’re_ not the one doing the killing doesn’t mean you’re not responsible…” Tim hesitates, “It’s the same with the calliope, actually. You can see why that’s bad, yeah?” 

Danny’s eyes glitter darkly in the low light and his shoulders hunch up. “Being in the institute hurt them. Every day they were stuck and starved and Watched. It’s cruel to keep them like that.”

Tim can’t help the sharp snap in his voice. “And them terrorising people isn’t?”

“It’s _food,_ Tim. I do it too.” Danny coils tighter, and Tim staggers like he’s just been punched. 

“That’s different.” Tim whispers, “You’re different.”

“ _How?”_ The question lands more like an accusation.

“You know when to stop.” It sounds brittle to Tim’s ears, and Danny tears through it-- 

“Because you tell me what’s okay?”

“ _Danny-_ ”

“I don’t regret it. They’re my friend, and I’d let them out again. That’s how I feel.”

“…Fine.” 

\---

_Night 2_

The day hadn’t been as fraught as Danny feared. Tim had tossed fitfully all night, the thin nylon strip between him and the outside had seemingly reawakened the worst of his worm paranoia, and come morning a silent and well-trodden pact to leave last night’s tension unrecognised was formed. They’d hiked up to the Greena Ball to give it a proper inspection during the day, and Danny supposed the so-called _‘finest of Dartmoor's rock piles’_ were probably as exciting as rock piles tended to go. Pushing on, however, Tim spots a great ash slug almost as long as Danny’s forearm, so he ultimately considers the day a great success. 

As the two of them settle outside the tent again, sun hidden behind heavy clouds, the easy comradery slowly bleeds away. Danny watches the trees quietly beside Tim, the two of them gathering themselves for round two. 

Danny finds himself chewing his lip impatiently. Last night had cracked open a niggling thought that he’d been trying to avoid ever since Tim said Prentiss didn’t deserve the courtesy of her story kept secret. Surprising himself, Danny opens:

“It’s not different, you know.”

Tim looks equally surprised and rather lost. “What isn’t?”

Danny sighs and raps his knuckles against the large stone he’s sat on, watching a moth throw itself at Tim’s light. “Me and Them both eat fear. It’s not fair to say they’re not allowed but I am.”

Tim hisses out a breath and mutters something too low for Danny to catch.

“You’re different.”

“How?”

“Well, you’re not killing anyone, for one.” 

“Fear’s fear. We’re eating the same amount, more or less. Constantly looking for scraps isn’t more _virtuous_ than having a good meal when you need one.” 

Tim pulls a face and wrings his hands together, fingers pressing into his scars. He’d been doing that a lot lately. “Honestly? In your case, it is.” Tim wets his lips, “I mean—obviously not killing things is better than, you know, the _alternative.”_

The _tap-tap-tapping_ of his fingers feels suddenly all too loud, so Danny clasps his fingers in his lap and bites down on the urge to move.

“…Maybe,” Danny’s leg starts jumping, “You said it was still my fault if people got hurt because of the calliope or Them, though. So that means I do kill people, ‘specially if you count the Circus.” 

Tim doesn’t say anything, but his arms go rigid. Danny’s leg stalls. 

…

…

…

Eventually, slowly, Danny delicately confesses. He’s not certain why he feels so guilty. 

“I have… broken the rules before. About food.”

An excruciating moment stretches out before Tim seemingly shakes himself out of whatever he was ticking over. “… I, um, I figured, honestly. Not like there’s anything I can really _do_ to stop you.”

Danny winces, “Yeah. Sorry.”

“It’s- not fine, really,” The white light washes out the warmth of Tim’s skin, catches his volume at odd angles and throws them into sharp relief. He looks tired. “I need you to try not to hurt people.”

“I know, I’m sorry. I felt bad, afterwards.”

“… Do you know how many?”

“Five times, exactly.”

“ _Oh.”_ Tim straightens up, cocking his head to one side, _“_ Uh, that’s actually a lot better than I was expecting.”

Danny squints at him, perplexed.

“Did you think I was just out in London causing, like, grievous trauma?”

Tim half-grimaces, ducking his head slightly, “I mean, I guess I just didn’t think you cared about it, not at first anyway, but at least I’d done my part to try and stop you from doing anything too bad? Christ, that sounds _bad.”_

Danny feels his lips tick upwards, “A little, yeah. And you say my lot are bad,” _Trust a watcher to let harm happen._ The thought sobers him, “And, uh, the first time was just because I thought the rules were stupid, but it felt—bad – lying to you. And I wanted to do the right thing, for you. So I decided to… play along, I guess.”

“What about the other times, then?”

“It was when I… needed it. It’s hard, being so hungry all the time, and sometimes I just _needed_ something _more._ Once was just because I didn’t realise how starved I was until I started eating. I hadn’t really figured out how much more frequently I’d need to snack to make up for how little it gives me. Once was after meeting your parents, or ours, I guess? I just…” Danny inhales deeply, ignoring the caress of wind ghosting against cracked lips. “I needed the comfort, I suppose. It’s always been something like that. I need to eat when I feel particularly weak, and I end up taking more than I should.”

Tim doesn’t respond immediately, eyes lit up as he watches the moths throw themselves against the lamp’s plastic casing. The trees sigh around them and Tim joins their chorus. 

“…Thank you, for telling me. I didn’t realise you cared so much.”

Danny almost sputters, “Of course I do! I’ve been trying.”

A slow smile creeps onto Tim’s face, scrunching up early crow’s feet and dimples.

“… _Yeah. You have.”_

\---

_Night 3_

_“_ So, what’s your whole deal with Jon?”

“Huh?”

“I mean, you clearly don’t like him.”

“Yeah he sucks arse.”

“ _Danny.”_

 _“_ You can’t tell me off-- You’re laughing! He’s rude and annoying and apparently _useless_ and I don’t like him.” 

“Okay, okay. Jon’s a twat, yeah, but you were so tense around him. And the institute in general, I guess. I was just wondering if there was anything I could do to help with that?” 

“It’s just the whole – _thing –_ of that place, you know? Does it matter now? I don’t have to go back there, do I?” 

“No, guess not. Just, if you want to get that whole _chip_ off your shoulder, I’m here yeah?”

“Thanks. I appreciate it, really.”

…

“… _Did you just make a pottery pun?”_

“… _Maybe.”_

 _“_ Tim I—I’ve never been so proud.” 

\---

_Night 4_

The clouds had, finally, made good on their threat, and the evening found Tim and Danny squatting in their tent as the rain cascaded down around them. Danny never really clicked with the idea of rain sounding peaceful – it was just noisy – but he found himself enjoying the not-so-soft drumming of droplets hitting the flysheet. It rounded out the silences between the two of them, crafting comfortable stretches of simply being in each other’s company. It was nice. 

Beside him, already nestled in his sleeping bag, Tim hums tunelessly, “We should do this more often.”

“Hm?”

“Camp, and stuff,” Tim grins, “We used to line up a few holidays together every year, went on big hikes, tried rock climbing, that sort of thing.” 

“Oh!” Danny’s mouth flaps uselessly for a moment, distracted by the pooling warmth flushing through him. “Uh, yeah I’d- I’d really like that. To have holidays, with you.”

“Mm. I didn’t realise how much I missed being outdoors,” Tim gazes up at the tent roof, eyes slightly unfocused, “…I think when you- vanished- I was so obsessed with finding out what happened I just let all that… slip away. And then you came back and—well, you know. Hurt too much to think about.”

“Sorry.” Danny ducks his gaze and scratches at his wrist.

Tim snakes a hand out of the sleeping bag and swats it in Danny’s direction, halting his picking. “It’s fine. Anyway, I think it’s good for you too, to discover all your old hobbies again.”

Danny fixes a smile on his face and leans into Tim’s good mood. “Oh? Was he very outdoorsy?”

“Yeah, _you_ were,” A low vein of nostalgia slinks into Tim’s voice and his eyes go soft. “I think I must have picked up half of my hobbies from being roped into your latest adventure. It’s kind of funny that it’s all happening in reverse now.” 

Danny’s head tilts to the side, “How’d you mean?”

“Well, it’s like you’re becoming _you_ again, you know? This past week, you’ve never been more _Danny_. I’d kind of… lost hope, that you’d come back—especially after you gave your statement—but I keep seeing pieces of you sort of… returning? Still here?” 

A stray gust of wind rattles rain into the side of the tent and Danny finds himself momentarily drowned by the noise. Everything feels too loud. 

“…Oh... I, uh, don’t know if— if that’s happening.” 

“I know you said you didn’t think it was possible, but I think I can _see_ it… Maybe, your memories are gone for good, and that’s—okay, I can live with that. But I won’t accept that you’re just. Gone.” 

“ _Um._ It’s just. I don’t – feel?—like I’m anyone else?” 

“… I mean, you don’t remember what you used to be like. Maybe you just don’t have a reference for all that.” There’s a hesitancy to Tim’s voice, neither of them quite satisfied with the explanation.

“… I guess…” 

“Danny?”

“ _I’m fine!_ It’s just a… a weird thought. I guess.” 

“I think it’s good. You’re getting better.” 

“Right. Of course.” 

\---

_Night 5_

The rain dissipates sometime during the night, though the clouds linger, washing out the grassy parklands with cool greys. The day fades quickly into twilight, and Tim finds himself stretching out his dinner for longer than is strictly necessary. 

Danny sits patiently beside him, poking holes into the soil with a stick. 

“Um. So, I’ve kind of been putting this one off.”

Danny pauses in his ministrations, and when he speaks his voice breezes out deliberate and airy. “Oh shit. That’s ominous as hell, Tim.” 

“Oh, piss off. This is serious.”

“I’m all ears.”

Tim watches an insect dart across their campsite. _Southern mayfly,_ his brain supplies. Scouts was good for something. He realises Danny’s full attention is on him now, the quiet swelling between them. Tim takes a breath. 

“Well it’s just-- Martin gave me the rundown of the Breekon and Hope visit and… You’re not… going back to the circus, are you?” 

A long, long, moment passes. 

“Danny?”

“I… I don’t know, okay?”

A soft breeze raises gooseflesh along Tim’s arms. “ _Danny.”_

The other hunches his shoulders inwards and gives the ground a particularly hard jab. “When I left, I promised I’d be back in time for the big one, and part of me still wants to be in it. But I know you don’t want me back there and I don’t really _miss_ the circus… but the shows felt good. Important.” Danny seems to sense the tension creeping along Tim’s spine and he jumps to motion, waving his limbs in platitude. “But I’m doing fine without them! Independent, uh, work? Is fine. I’m staying fed and all that, so I probably don’t _have_ to go back and—"

“You told them you were going to be there.”

Danny almost crumples on himself. “Yeah, well… maybe I was lying.”

Tim raises a sceptical brow, “Were you?”

“I... Don’t know yet.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?” Tim feels the fiery heat dripping off his words, “Because it really sounds like you’re just saying what whoever’s in front of you wants to hear.” 

Danny closes up like a shopfront. 

“Look, I just—” Tim forces a breath through his nose; he’s not blowing up here. “I thought we were past that. You don’t really want to go back, do you?”

“Yeah, um, I guess I don’t. Really. It’s just that when I was in the circus I felt like I had a- a _role._ I was _something_ without all the _someone_ and I felt— It just seemed like the natural conclusion to everything? It just made sense. But then I met you and things got… confusing. Which is normally very good! But I just… I don’t know what I am, anymore. Again, usually that works great for me.” 

“You’re Danny.” 

“…I suppose.” 

\---

_Night 6_

Danny’s hands are hidden deep in his rucksack, sneaking a couple of cool rocks while Tim is busy getting a head start on packing, when he –all faux casual—ventures forth: 

“… I’ve been thinking.” 

“First time?” Tim grins wolfishly at him.

“ _Ha_. Seriously though, it’s about tomorrow. I think I should go back separate to you.”

There’s the distinct cessation of busywork from over Danny’s shoulder, and when he turns his head he finds Tim frowning at him. 

“Why?”

“I want to go see the Toymaker—” Danny’s arms fly out to cut in premonition of protest, “-- _no wait_ I know what you’re going to say, but I want to keep my promise to Martin and Sasha. I think he can help me and, uh, he’s not with the circus, so you don’t have to worry about me being… there.”

“He’s not?”

“Nope! He, uh, does commissions for them sometimes? But he’s fully independent!” 

Tim’s eyes narrow. “What does the circus want from him?”

“Toys, obviously! That’s what he does.” Danny lolls his head back in a full-body eye roll. 

“… Right. Are these _toys_ of the Chucky variety?”

Porcelain shoulders droop forward apologetically and Tim already knows the answer. 

“Well… _sort of._ He builds the dolls which perform in the circus.” 

“Like what? Creepy clown mannequins?”

“Uh, well actually…”

Tim feels his nose bunch and his lips tug down, “ _Oh. Ugh.”_

 _“_ They’re nice! He’s very talented and the clowns are actually very good company.” 

“I’ll take your word for it.”

“They are!”

“Mm-hm.” 

Danny harrumphs, crosses his hands grumpily over his chest, and, noticing Tim still paying attention, harrumphs again. 

“You done?” Tim fights down a snicker as he’s met with a dramatic groan as Danny drags himself out of his slump. 

“ _Yes! Anyway,_ Are you okay with me going?”

Tim meets Danny’s glassy gaze. Takes a breath, then another. Thinks of the thing he met that first night he met that wore his brother. Thinks of all the little weeds that make up Danny slowly growing through its seams, and those being pruned off again. 

“… No, I’m not. But I don’t think that really matters.”

“Tim—”

“No I— I know you should. Sasha and Martin deserve it, and you can take care of yourself. I _know_ you can. It’s just, I’m worried.”

“Yeah I. I know… I’ll be quick as I can. Just pop in, ask about wards or whatever, then I’ll head back.” 

“… _Yeah,_ okay. Do you know how long you’ll be?”

“Um, a few days, maybe? His shop’s up in Edinburgh.”

“You know we can still drive back together right? London’s on the way to Edinburgh from here.”

“Oh! Is it?” 

“… Yeah. Edinburgh is North of London; London is North of Dartmoor. We both have to go North.”

“ _Oh wow_ you’re right!”

“Where did you think you were going?”

“I dunno. I was just going to ask to be driven to Edinburgh!”

“…What was your plan even?”

“…I was gonna hitchhike.”

“ _Uh huh._ ”

“What-- It’s a good plan! Stop laughing at me!”

“ _Look._ Let’s go home together tomorrow, and then you can take the car up to wherever you need to go.”

“Okay! I can probably drive!” 

“… Or we’ll get you a bus ticket.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew so this chapter was a long one hey? In fact it's pretty much double the length of all the others! I'd considered splitting it up into two chapters but I think it would have broken up the flow a bit, so I hope you all enjoyed this extra long update!


	9. Interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spa day with the Stranger

The Toymaker’s shop was an old, cluttered thing. Squeezed in between a masonry and a warehouse, the faded red door and swirling lettering declaring ‘ _ Exceptional Handcrafted Toys’  _ looked distinctly out of place. The shopfront boasted no windows nor opening hours, electing instead to simply wait for the once-vibrant mural on the brick front to catch the attention of an unfortunate soon-to-be customer. 

Danny fidgeted his feet as he waited for his knock to be answered, rain beading down his arms. He was tempted to just go in -- the door would be unlocked of course; the Toymaker was always open for business – but he was here as a guest, not a customer. The cobbled footpath dipped down in front of the doorway, inviting a puddle to form around Danny’s shoes. He felt like he was a very small island. 

It was as Danny started rocking back and forth to create small waves in his sea that the old wood swung inwards and he was met with the hunched form of the Toymaker. He was a raisin of a man -- the wrinkled edges of his face betraying his unnatural lifespan -- with skin that sagged  _ just  _ on the verge of lifeless, like old leather. Danny smiled, slightly awkward, as his glassy eyes –  _ the blue one was new –  _ widened when they landed on Danny’s face.

“Come in Bairn, quickly now.”

“Er, ‘ello,” Danny nodded his head in thanks as he stepped into the little Toyshop, glancing around at the crowded shelves of old-fashioned dolls and wooden miniatures. They stared back at him with painted eyes, so lifelike it almost felt wrong that they sat so still. Not that customers would have to worry about that for long. 

“Sorry fur the bide, Bairn, Ah hud assumed ye wur a punter.” The Toymaker reached to cup his hand around Danny’s chin, tugging him down to inspect him. Whereas the rest of him hobbled and wilted, his hands were taut around fluid joints, flowing with mechanical precision. The Toymaker tutted as he ran a thumb over Danny’s brow. “Your glaze haes chipped; hae ye bin eating properly? Come sit doon, we hae a lot tae do.”

Danny lets himself be pulled into the workshop, littered with paints and wood and scattered parts, even as he weakly protests. “No need, really! I, uh, actually just came here to—”

“Nonsense.” The Toymaker cuts and bodily fusses Danny towards a stool in one corner of the room. “Ah wull nae allow mah wirk tae be paraded in sic disrepair.” His hands cup Danny’s face again, gently and unmistakably affectionate. “And yer some o' mah finest wirk, Bairn.” 

“Ah. Thanks?” Danny wiggles on his stool as the Toymaker turns and begins puttering around his workshop, stooping to pick up brushes and lumps of clay. There’s no discernible separation between his many disciplines; metalwork bleeds into woodcarving, half-formed clay figurines nestle in between felted animals, still awaiting their finishing touches. Even half-complete, their forms are immediately recognisable—never let it be said that the Toymaker was not immaculate in his art. 

After drifting amongst the various benches and shelves, seemingly stopping at random to find exactly what he was looking for, the Toymaker returned to where Danny perched and deposited an assortment of paints and clay tools onto the heavy oak bench beside them. The Toymaker appraised Danny again before audibly clicking his teeth and hobbling off to fetch a bucket from the far wall. 

Danny felt thoroughly scolded. 

“Um, do you want a hand with anything…?”

The Toymaker blinked at Danny before shaking his head. “No, nae, nae need,” the Toymaker filled the bucket from an unmarked canister behind a collection of mannequin arms, and Danny caught a faint whiff of paint stripper. “Hn. Strange tae hae mah bairns gab tae me afore mah work.” 

The Toymaker was, like Danny, one of the very few once-humans chosen by the Stranger for its gifts. He had been a toymaker  _ before  _ too, renowned for the  _ realness  _ of his craft. Each doll stood a perfect replication of humanity, near photographic. So skilled was he at breathing life into the inanimate that one day his creation did breathe. Walked right off his workbench and climbed onto the store shelves. I Do Not Know You had wrapped itself around the Toymaker’s space, and he revelled in its embrace. 

The Toymaker was a pious follower, slaving at his craft for years, nursing each toy from conception to delivery into an unwitting child’s arms. His Children would sometimes wave at him as they were carried out his doors. 

With age, however, his hands began to stiffen, fingers would tremble as he dotted freckles over wooden faces and he began to fear he’d be of no use to his God. So he replaced them. Crafted automaton copies and placed them inside him, two ugly scars along his wrists the only evidence. Then his knees grew too weak for him to stand at his easels, his back too poor to lean over his worktables. Danny had heard whispers that the Toymaker had been worried his mind was going, quoting computers as a more reliable source of memory. 

Danny did not know if anything organic hid under the skin of the Toymaker any longer, but he didn’t think their god would accept anything less. It certainly hadn’t for Danny. 

Danny was brought out of his musings by the Toymaker sloshing the bucket down between his legs and heavily falling into a worn chair. 

“Let’s begin,” the Toymaker looks at him expectantly. 

“I just came here to talk actually,” Danny fidgets with the hem of his jacket, internally wincing as he accidentally wrings out the soaked material onto the floor. “You really don’t have to bother with—” 

_ “Tch _ , come noo. They chips wull crack if they’re left alone –  _ a stitch in time  _ 'n' sic.” The Toymaker prods at Danny, who wavers uncertainly before peeling his jacket and allowing it to splat unceremoniously on the ground. “Thank ye. Ye kin ask yer questions while Ah work.”

“What makes you think I was here for questions?”

The Toymaker grabs Danny’s arm and pulls it to himself, wetting a cloth in the paint stripper and running it over his skin. Danny watches, half-transfixed, as his freckles drip down his arm like oil, slipping from his fingers onto the floor. 

“You ne'er visit fur company,” the Toymaker chides. “Children, in mah experience, only return tae th' nest when they need somethin'.”

Danny stammers out a half-formed denial before he catches the spark of amusement in the Toymaker’s eyes. 

“I’ve been busy.” It sounds sulky even to him. 

“Oh, I’m sure,” the Toymaker dips his cloth back into the bucket and carefully wipes the illusion of veins running under Danny’s wrist. “I heard ye struck oot o` yer ain, o' coorse. Guid thing tae, ye wur wasted in the circus, Bairn.”

Danny blinks. “I thought you liked the circus.”

“I lik' thair patronage,” the Toymaker sniffs, “As fur thair shows? tacky an' outlandish. Th' uncanny is best experienced as an implacable sensation o' unknown, nae some gaudy mockery o' th' ordinar. Subtlety is whaur oor kind shuid lie.” 

Danny wasn’t sure he wholly agreed, but he smiled politely and nodded his head anyway, allowing a small silence to settle between them as the Toymaker did his work. Tim would probably want him to think that too, all light meals and sunny exteriors.  _ Getting better,  _ he said _. _

“You seem troubled, Bairn.”

Danny shifts uncomfortably as the cloth wipes over his clavicle, feels himself trickle away. His skin –  _ Danny’s _ , really, -- still sat underneath his paint, but stripped of blush and shine it sat flat and blank against his body like unbaked clay. Terracotta all the way down. 

“… It’s nothing really. Just— thinking about stuff.”

“You prefer thair  _ dramatics?”  _ The Toymaker’s nose wrinkles distastefully. 

“I, uh, don’t know,” Danny shuffles his feet and idly wondered if the tic was inherited or uniquely his own. If originality were even possible for him. “…I – um. I guess I’m just confused about myself.”

The Toymaker’s hands hold steady in their work even as their owner’s brow furrows. “… Is that nae a joyful thin’?” 

Danny ducks his head as his insides shift uncomfortably. “I don’t… it’s more like being on a ride for too long? Like—It was all fun at first, and still sort of is, but uh. I guess I’m getting… a little sick?”

The Toymaker finishes a long wipe from Danny’s shoulder to wrist and gently puts down the cloth. His mismatched eyes peer at Danny, an odd glint of critical appraisal swimming against an almost parental concern. 

“What is wrong, Bairn?”

Slumping, Danny confesses into his shoes, “I met someone. Who I knew  _ before _ . They, um, think I’m becoming who I was again  _ and I—”  _ Danny’s voice cracks “-- _ I--  _ I don't want to be  _ them  _ again. I’m--"

"Wull obviously nae." The Toymaker scoffs. "Is that all?"

"Uh," Danny blinks, taken aback, "What?"

"That’s naethin’ tae worry about," The Toymaker says like it's the most obvious thing in the world. "You've  _ Changed _ , Bairn. Dae ye think sic a sacred act cuid be sae easily undone?" 

"Well  _ no  _ obviously, but he--" Danny chews on the inside of his cheek, ignoring the small cluck from The Toymaker as it grinds on his teeth. "It's just-- he  _ said _ he could see bits of them in me and--"

"Mimicry does nae a man make." Danny thinks The Toymaker is trying to sooth, but his expression is closer to patronizing. "You coods hae every tic an' fidgit an'  _ memory _ if it suited ye an' you'd ne'er be mair than a convincin' doppelganger."

Danny inspects his hands, stripped back to featureless clay. Above him, The Toymaker sighs.

"A buildin' is distinctly separate frae a pile ay bricks, e'en if a one is made fae th' ither. It's frankly an insult tae mah wark tae imply you're merely a mask o’er a  _ who _ ."

"Oh." Danny blinks up at him sheepishly. "Sorry. Thank you. I just get confused about myself, so I couldn't really be  _ sure _ that I'm not more like my-- parts?"

"I suppose ye woods be," The Toymaker's eyes glimmer, "I admit 'at anonymity isnae th' aspect ay th' Stranger Ah am most attuned tae, but bein' gifted wi' it, raither than born ay it, makes ye nae less blessed."

The Toymaker wipes over Danny's face, and he feels himself drip from his body in rivulets of muddy paint.

\---

Danny knows they keep conversing, feels the shape of their dialogue, but finds the details slipping his grasp. He comes back to himself as the Toymaker paints the suggestion of shadow onto his eyelid, taut hand gently positioned against his cheek. He feels warm and blurry, heat seeped into him from the kiln -- though he's not certain when he entered it -- and the comforting embrace of unknowing. Danny runs a hand over his skin and sighs at their warmth. He likes being warm.

"Welcome back," the Toymaker murmurs distractedly. "Be still noo."

Danny hums as the paintbrush glides across the bridge of his nose, tickling it. An easy silence settles over them, interrupted only by the soft hushes of painting. Eventually, he looks almost human.

"Would ye lik' tae pick whaur yer freckles go?" 

Danny perks his head up, "Yes please!"

The Toymaker smiles at him. "Alrecht 'en, choose fife places, an' i'll dot in the rest."

Danny grins and swings his head to the side, looking very  _ thinkerly _ , he's sure. He's always liked the dark one just under his left eye, so he'll probably keep that. Tim liked it too, it was one of the few that hadn't been shuffled into a more artful arrangement when---

Hm. There's a thought.

"Can I show you a photo?"

The Toymaker seemed somewhat nonplussed but nods indulgently. "If ye hae one wi' ye."

Danny gently hops down from the workbench he'd apparently shifted to at some point, holding his limbs at wide angles to avoid smearing any paint. He must be close to finished; blushes and tans and the faint hint of pores worked back into his skin. He crouches down to rummage through a small pile of his clothes tucked together on the ground, gingerly pulls his phone from his jeans pocket, and huffs when he finds it completely flat. He could have sworn it had enough battery for the trip.

"Uh. Don't suppose you remember what I used to look like...  _ Before _ , do you?"

The Toymaker frowns, eyes stern. "You are nae him."

Danny ducks his head and hunches his shoulders. "He wants me to be him, though."

The Toymaker peers at Danny, tilting his head in an almost bird-like manner, "... An’?"

Danny squirms and tries to shrug off the awkward sensation of disappointing a parent. "I, uh... Want him to be, well, happy."

Danny grimaces slightly as the Toymaker examines him. He feels like brickabrack being inspected for faults.

The Toymaker sighs. "I dae nae mind, no."

"Oh."

"But Ah think 'at main be fur th' best."

Danny frowns, "... _ Yeah _ , maybe. I don't know what I'm doing with myself."

"I am getting’ ‘at impression," The Toymaker softens, "Let's start wee, first freckle?"

Danny chooses a spot on his palm, near his right thumb. He knows he didn't have one there before, and it looks up at him like a little reminder. He's Changed.

He still asks for the little spot under his eye, and places the rest over his breastbone, stomach, shoulder, and cheek. It ends up not mattering much, once he's done the Toymaker blends them into him with dapples of colour, sparsely laying a constellation across him. Only the dot on his palm stands starkly by itself.

Soon enough, The Toymaker finishes his work, pours a clear glaze over Danny, and ushers him to a large kiln tucked in a small courtyard behind the shop.

The heat envelopes him like home.

\---

Danny walks out of the kiln feeling wholly new, the freckle on his palm winking up at him as the Toymaker makes his final inspection. They nod in approval, and Danny is free to gather his things; he’s finished. 

“Uh, thanks for that, I guess.”

The Toymaker grunts in acknowledgement from where he’s hunched over a sink, cleaning his tools with the same careful scrutiny he afforded Danny. “Of coorse, Bairn.”

Danny hovers awkwardly where he stands, fingers reaching out to tap on a workbench almost subconsciously. 

_ Dum-da-da-Dum-da-da-Dum-Dum-Dum. _

The Toymaker sighs. “Can Ah help ye, Bairn?” 

“Ah, Yes! Thank you!” Danny’s drumming continues as he hums and haws. “I—uh. Do you know if I can put my, like, magic… into…  _ stuff?” _

Standing behind him, Danny can’t see the Toymaker’s expression, but he catches the slight cock of his head as he shakes water from a broad paintbrush and sets it down to dry. The Toymaker faces him with a slightly put-upon frown. 

“I’m nae certain Ah kin yer meanin', Bairn.” 

“Oh! Um,” Danny rocks back on the heels of his feet, tongue poking out slightly as he thinks. “Well I, hm. So… you know how I make things tricky? Well I want to put that  _ in  _ something, so it makes other things tricky, too.” 

The Toymaker pauses and Danny can see nothing but old taxidermy, drawn with age, as the man glances back at him with a glassy blue eye. 

“You want tae make tokens?” 

Danny smiles uncertainly. “… Yes?”

The Toymaker claps once and hobbles across the workshop to Danny, grabbing his arm and pulling him over to a stool. 

“Braw! I’ve aye wanted an apprentice.” 

“ _ Uh.”  _ Danny felt himself go shrill, “I—um. I’m flattered,  _ really,  _ but I—I don’t think I. Toys aren’t really  _ my thing,  _ you know? I just meant—”

“Hush.” The Toymaker waves a hand distractedly and Danny’s mouth snaps closed with an audible  _ tink!  _ “I’m nae keekin fur a replacement; ah hae many more wirks in me, yit. Although,” The Toymaker side-eyes Danny, “I simply meant Ah want tae pass doon th' act ay makin'. I’m endlessly amazed at hoo few ay uir ilk support th'  _ actors _ . Yer circus woods collapse withit uir gracioos seamstress, yit new bluid aye seems tae fin' itself workin' elsewhaur.”

“…Oh…” Danny didn’t know what to say. Interparty politics was a little above his paygrade; he just headed the sideshow. 

The Toymaker seems to sense his floundering and kindly turns away, rummaging through a messy collection of draws. “What dae ye want tae build?”

“A—hm, I’m not entirely sure? Something I can, uh,  _ put on _ something I want to keep hidden… A brooch maybe? Or a pin? Just a ward-y thing.” 

The Toymaker hums thoughtfully, hobbling over to an overflowing shelf of fabric and beads. “Let’s start wi' 'at, 'en.”

\---

Making is a slow process, but one Danny finds he quite likes. The actual construction is simple: bead some wire and shape it, thread together tiger tails, attach to their fixtures. The Toymaker instructs him to lengthen the process, carefully drip himself into every material. Losing himself is to Danny simpler than breathing, self sloughs off him like a lizard shedding its skin. He awakens to himself blanketed in a blurry fuzz, both hungry and sated. Gently, the Toymaker leans a hand against his shoulder and murmurs softly: 

“Well dane, Bairn.” 

Danny looks down at the bench in front of him, three pins winking back at him. He’d made Martin a small lapel brooch in the shape of a nightingale, its body a soft hazel felt with a single glittery black eye lovingly obscured under thread. Next to it, a vibrant hairpin lay waiting for Sasha, threaded beads cascading in colourful patterns that were thrown into disarray every time it shifted. 

Tim’s brooch was entirely crafted from deep earthy tones. Danny has vague memories of rolling out little terracotta pebbles and shaping them into leafy beads, handing them to the Toymaker to bake. Now, they nestle in a circle, shaped into a simple frangipani. 

Carefully, Danny scoops up his creations and wraps them in a scrap square of felt where they’d be safe. Part of Danny wonders if the Toymaker breathed so much of himself into Danny, too. 

“Um. Thank you,” Danny meets the Toymaker’s gaze, “For everything, really.” 

“Of coorse, Bairn.” The Toymaker smiles. Then, though sensing their business done, starts ushering Danny towards the shop front. “Yur aye welcome here.” 

Danny’s response is stopped short when he catches sight of someone standing on the shop floor. A woman, perfectly mundane, timidly examining a shelf of dolls.  _ Ah, a customer.  _

Danny gives the Toymaker a silly bow in place of goodbye and strolls past the customer just as she turns to greet the Toymakers, asking after one of the dolls. How she doesn’t notice them watching her back, Danny doesn’t know. 

Outside, Danny mutters a soft curse to himself when he checks his phone and  _ yep, still dead,  _ before picking a direction at random and crossing his fingers it’s back towards the bus station. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to formally apologise to Scotland

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you all for reading this far! This is my first attempt at writing a fic, so please feel free to give me any sort of feedback so I can improve! 
> 
> I'd like to give a MASSIVE thank you to Silvreyas for betaing this work!!! They've been absolutely wonderful!!


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